Latest / YOUR AVERAGE DELTON / Episode 2: LIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME
Transcript
- DELTON DEAL: Hey guys, welcome back to your average Delum 2.0. This is the second episode, and as you can see, it's so nice we did it twice with this atmosphere. As I mentioned in the first episode, my mother passed away. Well, that was 35 years ago. And this is not a day that goes by that I don't second guess my actions. Before that phone call, what should I have done differently? Could I have changed anything? Because I've been thinking about this for some time. And this keeps coming back to me. We're all doing this life for the first time. Every single one of us. No matter how confident someone seems, no matter how confident someone looks, no matter how many times they say, I've got this, they don't. Not completely. Because this version of today, this exact moment, this exact age, situation, mindset, combination of experiences, it's never happened. Not for you, not for me, not for anybody. Now when sit with that, it changes how I look at everything. ⁓ When was younger, I thought there was a right way to do life. ⁓ Like was a correct sequence. Go to ⁓ make good ⁓ pick your ⁓ Stay out trouble, ⁓ find the person, build a career, ⁓ start a ⁓ be successful. This all seemed to be in order, right? It's simple. Or at least that's what it looked like from the outside. But what nobody tells you is that that even looks hard for the people that are in it. Nobody knows this right path. We're all just guessing. Every step of the way. Why is that? Because when you're young, nobody hands you a manual, no guidebook that says, hey, at 17, you're gonna feel lost. Here's what you need to do. At 23, you're gonna have questions about everything. Here's the answer. And at 30, you realize half the things you were worried about just didn't matter. Now, just live, you decide. ⁓ You just move. ⁓ sometimes you move the wrong direction. ⁓ Or at least ⁓ feels like the direction. ⁓ I think about the I made right now. ⁓ The people I hung the decisions I thought ⁓ were very smart at time. ⁓ The ones I knew but made them anyway. ⁓ Dating? ⁓ Man, dating. that's a whole podcast series of its own. Because when you're young though, you think about what love is, you think about what you want, you think about how you can read people. But really, you're just learning. Learning what feels right, learning what doesn't, learning how to communicate or how not to. Learning what you'll tolerate and what you won't. And sometimes you learn those lessons the hard way. Actually, most of the time you learn them the hard way. Now why is that? Here's the thing. We judge people so quickly. We look at someone's relationships and say, you know what? I would never stay in that relationship. Or we see someone's decision and say, that doesn't make sense. But what we don't see is their struggle. Is their perspective. We don't see what they've been through. What they were taught. Maybe even what they think they deserve. And we definitely don't see what they didn't know at the time. It's impossible to know what someone didn't know. Because if I'm being honest, there are things I've done in my life. Looking back, I'd say, yeah, yeah, really, I've never done that. I would never do that again. I'm not sure how I did it the first time. Not because I'm a bad person, not because I'm trying to mess things up. But because I didn't know any better. Or maybe I didn't know any better. I didn't understand it yet. But until life puts a situation in front of you. Advice and words are just that. Words. And then one day something happens. A decision. A mistake. A turning point. And suddenly those words hit you differently. Now they mean something. Now they stick. Now they become part of how you are moving forward. That's why I say there's no right or wrong terms. Only the turns you make. Because at the time you make them, these terms seem to make sense to you. They're the only barometer you have to judge. Even if they don't make sense, think about that. If they don't make sense, if you knew then what you know now, of course you made a different decision. We all would. We would look back and say, well, if I had that information, you hear it all the time. That's just not how this works. Life doesn't give you hindsight in advance. It gives you experience after the fact. And that experience becomes your guide. Let's talk about something bigger than just that. Let's talk about marriage. Now I told you I married up, but that marriage up came after two marriages. Now, that's one of those things people really have opinions about. When do you do it? What do you do? How should it look? Everybody has advice about ⁓ who you should marry. Everybody has a perspective. It wasn't about being right. It was about you being right or me being right for that situation. But here's the reality. Even when you get married, you're still doing it for the first time, every time, because they're doing it for the first time. You're in this relationship for the first time. So marriage is different. Living together long term is different. Building a life together is different. Growing together or sometimes growing apart, that's different. There's no perfect way to do it. There's just the way you're doing it at that time. And you figure it out as you go. And then if you're like me, kids, well, here comes a whole new ball game. Now that's a whole nother level. Because now it's not just about anymore. Now you're responsible for someone else's life, their growth, their mindset, their future. And guess what? You're still doing it for the first time. You're getting one shot at this for the first time. And there's no perfect parent. There's no, I've mastered this moment. I understand it now. There's just I'm trying my best with what I know right now. Because you're making these in real time. And hopefully that's enough. I think one of the hardest things to accept is this. You don't get do-overs. Not really. You can apologize. You can try to grow from it. You can change the decision you're gonna make tomorrow. You can make better choices moving forward. But there is no going back. You can't unscramble eggs. I had a pastor that told me, Dalton, quit trying to unscramble eggs. You can rewind, you can't rewind a moment and get a do-over. This version of you that made that decision, that moment, is locked in. Now that can feel heavy. It can feel like pressure. Like you have to get everything right. But there's a flip side of that also. If there are no do-overs, then there's no perfect path because you are making a decision with what you have. No single correct way life was supposed to go. So instead, you're looking at the past and thinking I messed up. What if you look at it and say, that's what I did with what I knew at the time? That's what I did with what I knew at the time. That is no extra judgment, no beating yourself up, just truth. Because judging yourself too harshly, or judging other people harshly for that, ⁓ it doesn't ⁓ It just distance. It creates the idea that there's a group of people somewhere that that's doing it right, that understand what they're doing, that did it right, and a group ⁓ who did wrong. ⁓ Now, you've to put yourself in one of those categories. ⁓ But in reality, we're all just different parts of the same process, learning, adjusting, trying again in new ways to get this right. And you know, and I get it. Sometimes it's hard to judge. Sometimes it's hard not to judge. You see some people make the same mistake over and over again, and you think, come on, man. How do you not see it? But again, perspective matters, timing matters. Understanding matters. Not everyone learns at the same pace or at the same time. Some people need one experience, then they've got it. Some people need more. And some people are still trying to figure out what the lesson is even supposed to be. Now, for me, I've had many times in my life where I thought. ⁓ I had everything figured out. I felt confident, certain this is it. This is the right move for me. I understand it now. I finally got it figured out. And then later I realized it wasn't even close. That doesn't make that version of me wrong, incomplete, or stupid. It makes that version of me human. So when I say there's no right or wrong way, now I don't mean actions. Don't have consequences. Let's not get confused. They do. Every choice leads somewhere. Some places are harder than others. Some paths take longer to recover from. But every turn still becomes part of your story. And without those turns, you wouldn't be the person you are right now. We are living, we are growing, and maybe there's a better way, and we get to that way. Maybe if you knew more, saw more, understood more, you would even choose differently. But at that time you didn't. Because you couldn't. You couldn't yet. That's why it's so hard to judge people. Not impossible, of course. That's part of our nature, but it's hard because I know what it feels like in the moment doing what makes sense to you, even if it doesn't make sense to anybody else. So maybe ⁓ today's takeaway is simple. Give yourself a little more grace. Not an excuse, just grace. See, I think there's a difference. Grace to me is saying, I'm allowed to grow through this thing I'm going through, these decisions. I've made, I'm allowed a little grace. Excuse is a different thing. It means I don't have to change. I've made my decision and I'm not changing. Now, think about it. That's not what this is about. And maybe ⁓ we should give other people a little more grace too. You don't have to agree with their choices. You don't have to accept everything they do, but understanding that they also are living this life for the first time. It changes how you see them. No blueprint. I am set up with a set of circumstances and I'm making a decision in real time. At the end of the day, we're all just people making decisions with limited information in real time. Trying to build something that makes sense to us, trying to find happiness, trying to avoid pain, trying to figure it out. And there's something kind of comforting in knowing that we're all in this together because it means you're not behind. You're not late. You're not the only one who feels uncertain. You're just in it. Like the rest of us. Now I know this is a pretty heavy topic because it's gonna make you look internal. Make us think about the decisions we're making. So, whenever you are right now in your life, whatever decision you've made, whatever you're questioning, whatever you wish you could go back and change, just remember that was you doing the best you could with what information you had at the time. And right now, you've got a lot more to go. You've got a lot more experience. You're a lot more aware of how to make those decisions. Maybe you're a lot more aware of how to understand. So your next hand might look different. As a matter of fact, I'd go even further to say your next turn will look different. So guys, that's all I got for today. I know this was ⁓ ⁓ was deep for me. If this episode hit you in some kind of way, ⁓ a second and sit with it. Maybe even share with somebody who needs to hear it. ⁓ This has been your average Delton ⁓ and catch you next time. ⁓ Remember, your life is the only sermon some people may ever hear. Make it loud. Now this episode makes me think of this, and I'll leave you with this. ⁓ Don't miss the dream Looking back on the memory of the dance we shared beneath the stars of I for a moment all the world was right How could I have known that we'd ever say goodbye and I I'm glad I did enough the way it all would end, the way it all would go. I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the This is your average double. Out.