Screwed up Past; Fine tuned Future.

They say we can't choose our parentage, place of birth and genetic makeup...really? Come to think of it, we are where we are because of our birth parents, place and genes. While the young and down-and-out may curse all three, the more death conscious may come to embrace them. As we reach a certain age and maturity, having lived our lives by overcoming one obstacle after another, we come to see our past history, our "immutable" parentage and birth genes, as part of our creation, as part of what makes us who we are. We own it and wouldn't have it any other way. So, save for the suicidal, we embrace our past and consciously reconcile it with our present and use them as a springboard for our future. This is therefore the indelible mark of success: the ability to reconcile the past, however bad and abusive, with the present in a creative and purposeful collaboration to create one's future.  As we come full circle in this life, we also come to accept the default position that we had in fact chosen by "reverse life engineering" our parentage and birth genes. Ask anyone who had lived their life purposefully, and this would be their common reply, "I wouldn't change a thing in my past".