Any Regrets? Looking Back at What Was Worth It and Not.

A hop skip and a jump and I will turn 60-years old.

Well, in a few months I will turn 59. But that is close enough.

I have a lot more in my rear view mirror than in front of me, for sure. But it allows me to pause and look back a bit. What do I regret? What don’t I regret? I have seen many of my peers struggle as they move into the beginnings of the autumn and winters of our lives. Health struggles, money struggles, relationship struggles. You name it, they have it. I have friends who are on the verge of retirement and their lives have never been more precarious.

But those problems did not come out of nowhere. There were red flags going back to childhood. In fact, I think this is safe to say: as we approach our seventh decade of life, myself and my friends are what we always have been – just more so. Personality and proclivity have been accented, if anything. I think about this often. The neurotic I know have only become more so over the years. Those struggling with health issues while younger are worse off. Others who have invested wisely with their money and family are reaping major benefits. 

But I will narrow my focus mostly to myself.

I have been physically active since my earliest days. I thank my parents for that. They encouraged me to play a whole slew of sports. Try this, do that. It did not take much: I was eager to play sports almost all the time. My parents were also very physically active themselves, and that was crucial: they were modeling what it meant to be active and healthy. I remember running organized 5km and 10km races with my parents in the late 1970s. My dad was always up to shoot baskets with me. I remember our family was not often outdoors and exercising. So having grown up this way, it became a lifelong habit. Long after I was moved out and started my own adult life, I continued to live an active athletic lifestyle. 

So important. Thank you, Mom and Dad. The investment in fitness continues to pay dividends later into my life. I don’t regret any of the many sports I participated in. It is totally the opposite. An active lifestyle will help me to remain healthier for longer than I would have otherwise.

I have some friends who are starting to fall apart physically at our stage of life. Part of that might be genetics, and we cannot control that. But much of it comes down to lifestyle.

Jesus, your health. How important is that?

That leads me to a fraught subject of alcohol. This almost seems axiomatic: adults who are physically deconditioned and smoke cigarettes and drink booze often do poorly as they age. They sit on the couch and consume alcohol while watching TV. They are 65 and look like they are 85; relatively early in life they appear to be on death’s doorstep. Their health declines, and it is not for no reason. I was never going to allow that to happen. But when I was younger I drank more alcohol than I should have.

Was that a decision I regret? Well, that stuff is dangerous. The insidious nature of alcohol can sneak up on a person. You think it is helping and you enjoy the “buzz,” but then it is really dragging you down later. By the time I was 30 I had a healthy skepticism of alcohol, and by the time I was 40 I drank damn little of it. I was a parent by then. I did not want to have my daughters surrounded by a culture of booze, and we have had almost no alcohol in our house for the last twenty years. It was that simple.

But what about during college or in those years after? In my fraternity at UCLA? Or the years when I was a young man? 

I don’t regret the party years of my youth – the days of “wine and roses” – and those were many. I have stories and then more stories on road trips or on vacations to Europe. There was heavy drinking wrapped up with memorable adventures with friends. I don’t regret those moments. I lived life intensely and alcohol was part of that. But I also recognize that hangovers and the money spent were part and parcel of that whole process. That shit would take you down, if you made it into a career. Decades of hard partying were going to have a cost. So I do regret some of it. But not all of it. I am ambivalent.

I have never enjoyed a New Year’s Eve party of hard drinking, for example. Those parties seemed forced. We were drinking to get drunk because I think that was part of the idea of a New Year’s Eve party. I didn’t enjoy myself much, and I had a headache all the next day. Same with St. Patrick’s Day. I regret many such unfun nights of drinking which left me with a hangover the next day. There was lots of drinking and little real enjoyment. I have heard of the term “hangxiety,” which refers to that vague sense of doom and unease coupled with a headache too much alcohol brings the next day. I have experienced too much of that. Hence, I stepped strongly away from it all over twenty years ago. I don’t miss it. I will have a beer or two after a tennis match with my buddies, but that is pretty much it. Alcohol is not my friend. And as I am older I suspect I would withstand its damaging effects even less than before. I feel even more strongly about all the other “illegal” drugs. Why mess with that stuff? Overdose? What is the upside?

Changing subjects from alcohol to sex, I regret almost none of my romantic liaisons. I have been happily married for almost 24 years, but I lived a full and active single life before that. I am so glad I did. When I did get married, I had no illusions about giving up life as a single man. I had known many women, and I was ready to settle down with just one. I had lived that stage of my life, and I was ready for the next. But I have a few friends whose romantic lives are pretty barren. One married the second girl he had slept with while in his early 20s, and then he got divorced in his 40s. His romantic life after that was a disaster, more or less, with all these other divorced middle aged people. He should have played the field more when he was younger. He should have dated and slept with women left and right before he turned 30. He didn’t. Everyone who was single after 40 seemed to be damaged, my friend claimed, and he was one of the damaged. As he is now almost an old man, his romantic life has been spare and unremarkable. Just a handful of women, a lot of misfires, over a whole lifetime. Middle age divorce, unwanted celibacy. Yikes. Don’t be that guy.

I have another friend who is around 34-years old. His long-term girlfriend moved back to the Netherlands because of Trump Administration anti-immigration policies, and so he is single again. I told him, “When you are old and gray and living in a retirement home you will not regret having slept with LESS women in your lifetime. Get out there and whore it up! Date lots of women and have adventures! Go for it! You have to kick a lot of tires before you find the car you want to buy.” I thought that was great advice for a young man who is newly-single – and I think it is great advice for a woman in the same situation. You only get one chance in this lifetime to enjoy yourself. Your body is your friend; enjoy it. Put yourself out there, find partners with the same state of mind, and “seek happy nights to [follow] happy days.” Amen! 

I suspect a huge amount of the angry politics and intrapersonal strife in the world comes back to the sexual frustration which amplifies it all. I always thought George Orwell was exactly right in “1984” when he described how extremist political movements tend toward sexual puritanism:

“When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.”

This could explain huge chunks of Islamic fundamentalism, radical feminism, and certain strands of the totalitarian regimes of old, in my opinion. Sexual repression, paired with moral absolutism, is an explosive combination. There is a reason Mohammad Atta, fanatical mass murderer, was also a virgin. Similarly, researchers report that younger generations are currently experiencing a “sex recession,” and I suspect that is one of the many causes for the horrendous mental health stats from that cohort. I feel sorry for them, and I’m thankful I grew up in a different era. Mammals have certain biological needs with respect to copulation, and a mature well-adjusted adult knows how to satisfy them in a healthy way. Sex, pair-bonding, and touch are crucial for us. A whole train of negative consequences follow the failure to procure them. You don’t have to look far to see this play out in real life, trust me.

I was pro-sex when I was younger. I still am. No regrets. I would do it all over again, with a few minor changes. Sex is important. I did not squander my time. I used it. I urge you to do the same, dear reader.

Moving to another topic, I never was all that dedicated towards making money. I did not invest much. I did not own a house until my late 30s. My life was dedicated mostly to exercise and learning. I was a teacher and an athlete. I was rarely home. My limited energy revolved around reading and writing. Now I see my friends whose lives were largely dedicated to saving and investing and they are thriving financially. As we prepare to turn 60 they have the financial freedom to not work at all. That is no small thing. 

I have one friend who grew up in bitter poverty who now owns his beautiful house outright. Money and improving himself materially was a major aspect of his life in a way it was not in my own. But he also read and learned much less than I did. I feel a bit negligent and inferior in comparing myself to him, financially. But we all make decisions in how we spend our precious time and energy. And there are pros and cons to all of them. I would have been miserable looking at my bank account all the time and worrying about returns on investments – continually scanning the numbers and dreaming in dollar signs. Instead of the patient labor of the long-term investor, I chose the strenuous life of the mind and body. My license plate rim, as well as the steel cup in my car, and also a sign on the wall of my bedroom, all state the same ancient Roman maxim: “Mens sana in corpore sano.” That was my motto. No regrets. I will have my pension soon and other sources of income, so I will be fine financially in old age. I will have enough. And to have spent most of my life’s energy and precious time on money and the pursuit of material goods seems like a waste, in my opinion. I had to be true to myself. Years ago I bought a series of lectures on investing from The Great Courses company, but I only made it through a few lectures. The pursuit of money for its own sake bores me: that is the honest truth. I have been unable to will myself to become unbored by it so far.

But I have friends who have next to no money. They are almost 60-years old and live hand to mouth. They most likely don’t have many more years of work left in them. I worry for them. To be old is hard enough without being old and broke. Then old and broke and sick. Or how about old and broke and sick with few family or friends? Yikes! Where will they be in five years? Ten years? The thought makes me nervous. We are nearing the endgame. Choices made over a lifetime come bearing fruit or not. We all make choices. Those choices have consequences. Nobody gets to have it all. So I have ambivalence. I suspect everyone does.

I sometimes look at myself and am embarrassed. I was at UCLA a few weeks ago and I encountered numerous Division One athletes from other campuses there to compete against the Bruins, and I thought to myself, “That young lady over there is better at her sport than I ever have been at anything in my whole life.” From a certain vantage point, this is true. But I worked a full career for 35 years and successfully raised a family. I am a noted 4.5/5.0 recreational tennis player on the verge of becoming a senior citizen. I did the best I could with the talent I had. I have read four books a month for the past thirty years and written and revised essays incessantly. I did not waste my time. I don’t have to apologize to anyone, least of all to myself.

I do have regrets. I would do some things differently, if I had the chance to live my life over again. But I don’t have major regrets, thank God, and I would do most things the exact same.

I regret most of the time and energy I spent thinking about politics. That investment paid next to no dividends. I know several persons who have dedicated the greater part of their lives to politics to no positive result. It just dragged them down. Politics for some can be like whisky in the hands of an alcoholic.

Yes, I return again to the “the beast we put in our mouths to steal away our brains.” Alcohol is such a danger. That shit will kill you. It is an insidious bomb, a landmine, waiting to go off. Same with other drugs like crystal meth or fentanyl, or even more so, although I have no personal experience with them. Drugs like that conjure images of skulls and crossbones: desperation, despair, death. No, thank you. Loneliness is another major risk: it will hollow you out and make you mean. And mental illness can turn a person into his own worst enemy, although that seems a sly tough disease to overcome: genetics matter here. Mental health struggles can be like that painful weight around your neck which drags you down and never really departs, and the warp and woof of the disease can alter over time into new and painful variations. Winston Churchill talked about the “Black Dog” of his intense depressive melancholia which walked beside him and was never far away. Yikes. Avoid that if you can.

And of course your physical health could absolutely tank anytime, and then you are DONE. Maybe the decline in your health is your fault, at least partially, but maybe not. And in the end it will make no difference anyway. We will all be made equal when we are buried and moldering in the dirt after death. That depressing thought also reminds me not to take my life too seriously – or anything too seriously, for that matter. But try telling that to a 17- or a 25-year old.

I also have to remember the mistakes I made in my life were often huge opportunities to learn. They made me a better man. They helped me to clarify who I was. I emerged from hard times better able to follow my own life’s path and maximize my potential. So perhaps I would not undo my mistakes, even if I could. As Aeschylus stated, “We must suffer into truth.” Perhaps that is unavoidable.

And, to be honest, all the angst and anxiety of my life around 25 or 30-years of age are beginning to recede into the distance. I used to have a nightmare about college and grades. Not so much anymore. Everyone begins to mellow out as they age; the errata of the past sting less. Stability and peace of mind are what matter more now. So what does that mean? I focus on my health and my friends. Nurturing family and managing change. Everything else is negotiable.

Looks? Ambition? Ego? Status? Popularity?

Nah. They don’t seem to matter anymore. Do you know how old I am?

Politics and public life? Crises in far away places? Wars and rumors of war? 

I pay attention to them. But I don’t pay much attention. The world seems to recede away from me, and I hold it all at arm’s length. The affairs of the world move this way and that, and then history repeats itself. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal.” Will any of it matter in five or ten years? Just more assholes acting like assholes. I grow skeptical. My attention moves elsewhere.

So it is an interesting time of life. To be in your 60s seems to mean you are old enough to harvest the fruits of a life well lived, but still young enough to be healthy and to travel and enjoy oneself fully. The 70s seem like a rougher decade, health-wise. And anything in your 80s is a bonus nobody should expect, and shit could go south at any moment. Do it now before then. The end will be here soon enough: the permanent dirt nap.

So I look forward to my sixties. And I am disinclined to spend too much time and energy looking back, this essay notwithstanding. No apologies. We struggle. We make mistakes and hopefully learn from them. There is no “magic wand” to render it all flawless. We encounter forks in the road with trade-offs, and we make choices. Then we live with those choices, hopefully without regrets.

Amen.