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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I think a lot about the number of lives I've already lived in this single body. How many times I've

started over, personally, or professionally, how many new relationships, new jobs, new books I've begun,

having no idea how they would turn out, or if they would turn out.

I find the notion of do-overs incredibly inspiring and forgiving, right? Because we don't just have

one shot to make a life we love. No, we get to reinvent ourselves

again and again as many times as we want to or need to. I think of it as reincarnation light.

The idea that we can be reborn and transformed many times in this lifetime, no death required.

I've been trying to impress this idea on my kids, too, lest they think the choices they make now are choices they

will have to abide by and live with forever. I remind them that their interests can change,

their styles can change, even their personalities can change. Teenagers who are athletes don't always stay athletes. Teenagers who are bookish and shy don't necessarily stay that way. There are talents and pieces of themselves they will discover later.

They will be becoming who they are their whole lives, much like their mother.

I once heard the comedian Pete Holmes say about his past, something along the lines of,

that life was the weird horse I rode to get to this life.

I think the speaker of today's poem would like that imagery as much as I do.

Here's to weird horses, and to do-overs,

and to new beginnings, which are endless.

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