Does anyone else ever imagine the amazing person you could have been?

Hi all.

I clearly remember a TV news story from when I was around age 10, about some local businessman doing well for himself. Self made man, major success with several companies, that type of thing.

My mother made a comment about the businessman in her way, saying “Ohhh, he’s a real opportunist isn’t he”.

As though the businessman was sneaky and dastardly and that being an opportunist or seeing opportunity and “going for it” was a bad thing.

It wasn’t even about me but the shortcut to my impressionable self had long been carved out by her, so for the rest of my life I sat back when maybe I should have stepped forward. I stayed quiet and let someone less appropriate take “the thing”, etc.

And I daydream and wonder if that, and so many other ways that I was “held back”, stopped me from becoming who I could have been.