This is a serious topic.
If you had your life to live over, how would you live it?
It seemed
appropriate that I started to write this column on the longest day of the year
– June 20, 2017. It has taken me a few months to finish it.
This is my
attempt to define a perfect life and how important it is to aspire to live that
perfect life.
I write this
as a new great-grandfather, as of three months ago, when little Hailey Renee
Marie Barnett came into the world. I am
writing this for her, plus our 13 grandchildren and all those other descendants
who are not here yet.
My most
important conclusion is that the greatest wealth a man can acquire in his
lifetime is a healthy and loving family. Nothing else comes close.
So just how
“deep” should I make this essay? Well, here goes:
In recent
years I have been hanging out with some folks who contend your most important
goals in life should be finding truth, goodness and beauty.
Looking back
on a career in journalism, it is easy to agree about the importance of
truth. Rarely is truth relative. When all the facts are in, truth will usually
rise to the top.
When I was
younger I loved the concept that all things were relative, which means just
about everything was determined by the situation. After years of dealing with
life, you realize that relativism is over-rated. There are absolute truths in
this world and you need to find them out and then live your life accordingly. There
is right versus wrong. There is good versus bad. Character and ethics are real
and both will help you find the truth.
In my life, I
did not have to look too far to find real goodness. My wife Nancy of 51 years
is the best person I have ever known. How on earth I ever found her is a big
mystery to me. She is the best thing
that ever happened to me and let’s hope all you folks out there reading this
will be as fortunate when it comes to relationships.
Nancy is a
Jefferson Award recipient for all the good she has done in raising money to
fight cancer and helping the needy with the Christmas food basket program.
When it comes
to beauty, I say just open your eyes. We live in a beautiful place populated by
beautiful people.
In recent
years, I have worked with 54 Wyoming-based photographers. I love their outlook
when it comes to Wyoming. A great many of them love a foggy day or a hard rain
or a heavy snow because of the opportunities it gives them to photograph our
beautiful landscape in a new way. Now, I
try very hard to not complain about the weather. This is difficult, as I get older.
If I had my
life to live over, I would not have squandered so much money and time on
toys. A big boat comes to mind. Sure, we
had a lot of fun with it, but what an expense and what a time suck.
For a long
time I believed that whoever died with the most toys wins. What a joke!
And it really is a joke. I think a better saying would be “he who dies
with the most friends wins.”
I should have
gotten in better physical shape. This
would have allowed me to better explore this wonderful country we live in. Sure, I have been all over Wyoming from the
Medicine Wheel to Medicine Bow and from Pinedale to Pine Bluffs and from
Evanston to Evansville, but there are places that are unreachable because of
not being in good enough physical condition.
One old-timer
once wrote that if she could live her life over, she would have eaten more ice
cream and less beans. I think I did eat
my quota of ice cream and probably should have been eating more beans.
If I could
live my life over, I would not have been so competitive. I was a holy terror to my business
competitors and, as a result, they were hard on me. And even way too competitive with family and
friends. Bless your business competitors because they make you better. But it
took me way too long to learn that I could get much more done through
cooperation rather than through intense competition.
I liken my
life to a baseball game and we get to play nine innings. If so, I am hoping this is the middle of the
seventh and it is time for a stretch. Maybe time to sing the song Sweet Caroline. Sure hope it is not the bottom of the ninth.
If I had my
life to live over, I would find more joy in everything that I did. And I would strive to provide joy to others
as a main goal of my life.
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