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Three funerals in four weeks. A friend taken by bowel cancer. Another by a stroke. A third, most heartbreakingly of all, by his own hand. It’s got me thinking about life. The big questions no longer feel abstract; they feel like they’re sitting across the table, waiting.
So. Do you have any regrets about the choices you made in your younger years?
As the song goes, I have a few. Not spending more time with my daughters while they were growing up. Not making more of the time with my dad before he passed at just 64. Though I suspect parent guilt is something most of us carry, no matter how present we actually were.
Surprisingly, I have absolutely no regrets about our spending choices. There’s a strong financial argument that my wife Suzie and I were frivolous, spending far too much on travel in our younger years. Before kids, we travelled extensively: far-flung destinations that took real planning, including months on the road on extended unpaid leave. When the girls came along, we recalibrated rather than stopped. Three foreign trips a year became the norm, kept within five hours of home.
All of this cost a “lot” of money that a sensible young couple might have saved instead. We could undoubtedly have entered retirement wealthier. But the gifts you send your future self have to be balanced against the gift of actually living now. Deferring joy, deferring experience, deferring “life” is not without its dangers.
Too many of my peers have been stopped in their tracks far too soon. Cancer. Multiple sclerosis. One friend paralysed after a car crash, and he’s among the fortunate ones. Others haven’t made it at all. Then there are those still here, but whose freedom has been consumed by caring for an ageing parent or a seriously ill partner. It deepened my belief that living solely for some future version of yourself, banking everything on plans that may never unfold as imagined, is simply wrong. Balance is everything.
I’ll admit I may have had it easier than most in striking that balance. Travelling the way we did while still buying a home young and contributing to pensions was a fortunate position, and I 100% recognise it. But the principle applies regardless of circumstance. Putting life on hold until some more responsible future moment carries real risk, one my friend group knows all too well.
The future isn’t guaranteed. We need to live now, fully and deliberately, while also taking our future selves seriously. Not one or the other. Both, at the same time.
Perhaps that’s the real lesson hiding in plain sight within my own regrets. The things I wish I’d done differently have nothing to do with money or travel. They’re about presence: time with my daughters I can’t get back, conversations with my dad that never happened. No financial planning could have fixed either. They simply needed me to show up and choose the moment over everything else clamouring for my attention.
So when I look back with no regrets about the spending, I don’t think it’s really about the travel at all. It’s about the fact that Suzie and I chose to live, fully and deliberately, without endlessly waiting for a more sensible time. We got that part right. I just wish I’d applied the same thinking a little closer to home. Inflation doesn’t erode your memories, and it costs nothing to be present.
I don’t currently have regrets of the type you are speaking of. I may get on my deathbed someday and wish I had done more of this or that, but anticipating that isn’t going to cause me to do any of those things now, so I must not want them badly enough.
I hear you. This reminds me of something that occurred with my in-laws. They were retired and lived on the east coast, near the ocean. G’s father was a birder and enjoyed walks in the woods. Her mother, not so much but she enjoyed the ocean views.
Bill spoke periodically of seeing the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state, but it seemed it would never happen. Then G’s mother told us they were going to travel to LA. She had been invited to an event for playwrights.
I decided this was an opportunity, discussed it with G and I roughed up a travel itinerary to get them to the Gorge. They would take a train from LA to San Francisco. We would fly in, pick them up in an SUV and travel by vehicle. We discussed as a group and they agreed.
I then planned a daily itinerary with daily driving distances, stops along the way, places to stay and so on. We would travel north through California, stopping by the National Parks and Bodie ghost town. Then to the Columbia River and east toward The Dalles, OR for a short visit with a relative. We would return via the Oregon coast and the Pacific Coast Highway, stopping at lighthouses because Bill was a fan. I made all of the necessary reservations.
As the time approached there were some serious fires in California, and the price of gasoline went above $5 a gallon. It was tempting to cancel the trip, but I approached it as a “once in a lifetime event”. I carefully researched the fire situation and decided to persevere.
Bill’s health was becoming tenuous, but they decided to go to LA as planned and so we did the entire trip, as planned. In fact, he amazingly climbed many of the circular stairs in the lighthouses. The trip was more than what was expected and everyone had a wonderful time. I took thousands of photos, sometimes irritating G. From these we created an amazing DVD, set to music.
The pertinent thing is this. We didn’t know it, but this was Bill’s one opportunity. Not long after, Bill’s health further declined and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, moved into a care facility for the remainder of his life.
What are wonderful thing to do and a priceless memory.