The Age of Reflection

How old do you have to be to reflect upon your life and see your mistakes? I think that 50 is a good starting point. When we are in our 20's and 30's we can only see how life affects us. We are so busy building a life that we cannot see how what we do can take a toll on others. When we reach 40 we realize that there are other people's feelings in the world and maybe our actions can hurt them, but we do not have enough life skills to fix things. When we get to be 50 and over we see our years on the other side of the mountain. We can feel for other people in a way we never did before. We can see hurt and anger that was unnecessary. We can see that small things were blown up out of proportion and were not relevant to anything. Sometimes we are lucky and can mend fences. Sometimes the fences that we need to mend are no longer there. That is something that can haunt us forever.