Living Life Without Regrets

Looking Back Without Living There

One of my goals in life has been to live with as few regrets as possible. I believe I have done fairly well with that, although I surely have a few things I would change if someone handed me a rewind button.

The biggest one? I would not have married right out of high school. I would have gotten some education, learned a trade, or at least established myself before taking on the responsibilities of a wife and children.

By the time I was 20 years old, I was in the U.S. Air Force, married, and the father of two children. That is a lot of living packed into a short time. One minute you are a high-school kid, and the next minute you are responsible for feeding, housing, and caring for a family. I had stepped into adulthood without many of the tools I needed to make life easier.

I have often wished my parents had pushed back a little. My mother made it clear that once I graduated, I needed to find a job and move out. That hurt. It made me feel as though home was no longer really home, but a place where I was simply expected to do my part and move on.

When my girlfriend and I began talking seriously about marriage, I spoke with my mother. She told me it was my decision, and that she had no objections. But looking back, that 18-year-old boy needed more than permission. He needed somebody to say, “Slow down, son. Get a job. Learn a trade. Get an education. Build yourself a foundation before you take on a family.”

Maybe that little bit of resistance would not have changed anything. Then again, maybe it would have changed everything.

Now, before anyone thinks I have spent my life blaming my parents, let me be clear: I have not. The choice was mine, and I take responsibility for it. But I believe parents have a responsibility to help their children look ahead and prepare for adulthood. They cannot make their children’s decisions, but they can offer guidance, encouragement, and sometimes a little needed resistance.

In fairness to my parents, they came from a different time and place. In the coal camps of southwest Virginia in the 1950s, getting a job and marrying after high school was normal. College was not something most families discussed very much.

I remember my dad and the other miners gathering down at the bridge after supper, talking about coal and whatever else was on their minds—mostly coal, as I recall. Someone once asked Dad how far he had gone in school. He answered with a grin, “Three days…in Brady’s place.” Brady was his older brother.

That tells you something about the world they knew. On my dad’s side of the family, only one of six children—my Aunt Beulah—went to college. On my mother’s side, no one did. Education simply was not the priority it would become for later generations.

Still, I do not write this with regret weighing on my heart. I have a rule I have followed for many years: You can blame your parents for almost anything for ten years after you leave home. After that, it is time to stop.

We all make mistakes. We all make choices that later leave us shaking our heads and wondering, “What was I thinking?” But we made those choices with the knowledge, experience, and maturity we had at the time.

When I look back at some of my younger decisions, I try to give that young man a little grace. He did not know what I know now. It would not be fair to judge him with the benefit of all these years of hindsight.

Regrets are not meant to keep us trapped in the past. If we let them, they can teach us, strengthen us, and help us make better choices going forward.

Henry Ford said it best, “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”