Category Archives: Avoiding Regrets

It Comes Down to Choices: Wanda's Advice

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Wanda, 85, worries that young people won’t be interested in her life lessons. I think she’s wrong about that, because her hard-won lessons for living are ones we all can use.

I write poetry for children and for the old. The media generation escapes me. I really would like to know what is going on, but it all seems as alien as the planet Mars. What could I tell them out of my experience that would have any meaning for them? In my 84-year-old case, I feel that I have lost their attention. If I could re-capture it for fifteen minutes, I would say this:

It all boils down to choices. Make a bad one in a few seconds, and live with the consequences for the rest of your life. When you are young, lots of the choices have to do with sex and relationships. Use your head, and go carefully.

If you have a chance, get as much education as you can, because it gives you options you would not have otherwise. Find out what your strong suite is, and follow up on it. Don’t be afraid to seek advice . If words are your thing, and you think you might make a writer, don’t wait until you are 70 years old as I did.

Those who make a plan for their lives have an advantage over those who just float merrily along. This, in fact, is what I did, and I had a wonderful ride – but if someone had asked me “What do you want to do with your life? You’re only going to get one.” I might have focused more, and perhaps made a difference . But no one ever did. Too late for regrets!

One must make a living, and it is not easy these days. But don’t insist on being a millionaire. Focus on making enough money to bring up your children, educate them, save and invest anything extra for your old age.

If you have children, spend time with them, doing “stuff” like going on beach picnics, going to the zoo , reading poetry and stories at bed time, making cookies, at Christmas, singing with them, using art materials( Kids clean up well.) These are things they will remember in later life.

I think I’ll stop here. If I get preachy, no young person is going to listen.

Learning to Live in the Moment: Why Not Do It Now?

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John, 70, lived much of his life looking toward the future, striving in his distinguished career. His lesson is to learn to live more in the moment. He learned this in his sixties, but suggests younger people learn it sooner.

I don’t say people shouldn’t think about the future. But when you really give yourself up to the present, when you’re in the room and you look around you, and there are other people in the room and you’re able to really zero in on those other people, and being able to really sense what they’re feeling and tap in to their own presence, then it’s not aimless at all. You feel very connected, very grounded, and it’s energizing. So you receive energy by making those connections in the present moment.

And it’s not just with people. The same thing is true with a walk in the woods. If you can really open yourself up to hearing the sounds and smelling the smells, and feeling the touches, the wind, and all those things, then you increasingly feel like an integral part of that system, so that you too have feelings, and they begin to connect with what’s going on around you. You may feel small, but it’s not a very frightening smallness. Instead it’s a feeling of being a part of a larger something. There’s a connectedness that is very, very reassuring. So that’s what I mean by being present and being connected to now.

I think you inevitably look at the future, but to the extent that you can still appreciate what is going on today and at the moment, then exactly what that future is going to be continues to be an open question, and that openness I think has great value. You’re allowing in some sense your intuition to play a role, and not being afraid that somehow that intuition is going to compete with and overwhelm your reason. That the two can work together, and support one another, influence one another.

It’s not easy, particularly for those of us who spend a lot of time in academic institutions or other jobs where the rational part of you is applauded. Living in the present and enjoying life isn’t something that you complete, or accomplish; it’s something that you strive toward, something that you work on, something that you engage with. It’s a process, at least in my experience.

Okay, I Admit It: I Like the Taco Bell Elders Ad – What Do You Think?

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I anticipated the now viral “Viva Young” Taco Bell ad with dread. As someone who studies and promotes elder wisdom, I have hated just about every ad I’ve seen that tries to portray “with-it oldsters” engaging in hijinks. But Taco Bell’s Super Bowl ad was a genuine – and pleasant – surprise. I’ve watched it many times now, and I like it. In fact, I like it a lot.

It somehow manages to convey freedom and an openness to experience, while using older actors who look, well, the way a lot of older people look. It didn’t make them, or their situations on their wild night out, cute sterotypes. As the director of the ad, Tom Kuatz, put it: “I didn’t treat them differently than I would 20-year-olds. That’s part of the concept. Kissing was kissing on the mouth, dancing was dancing, doing the robot was doing the robot like a 20-year-old would do.”

I’ve spent the last five years talking to the oldest Americans about, among other things, how to make the most of the later years of life. And what they told me is a lot like what this commercial manages to convey in a very short time. For successful aging, they endorse principles like this:

            Become more of a free spirit. Over and over as they reflected on their lives, I heard versions of “I’ve given up worrying” and “Why do people worry so much about everything?” Indeed, from the vantage point of late life, many people see fruitless rumination about the future as a young person’s game. As one 83-year old put it: “Don’t believe that worrying will solve or help anything.  It won’t.  So stop it.”

 Focus on the short term rather than the long term. In the ad, the actors are clearly living in the moment. And that’s what most of the elders we interviewed suggest: focus more on the short term. As a 102-year old told me: “The most important thing is one day at a time. You can plan ahead but it doesn’t always work out.”

Savor the moment. When people seek happiness, they often think about “big-ticket” items: buying a house, finding a partner, having a child, getting a new job, making more money. The elders tell us that a positive attitude depends on thinking small: seeking unexpected momentary pleasures that are experienced intensely. Not every older person wants a wild night of clubbing as shown in the commercial, but they do love to immerse themselves in the present moment.

Take risks. We think of older people as more conservative, but in terms of living life to the fullest in old age, the opposite is the case. They tell their peers (and those of us who will, if all goes well, be old someday) to let go in the last third of life. A 94-year old laughed: “My advice about growing old? I’d tell people to find the magic!” Many elders described life past 65 as a “quest” and “an adventure.” Their advice to us? Endorse embracing excitement, creativity, and risk-taking well into our 70s, 80s, and beyond.

And Taco Bell (whether you like their food or not) managed to convey a bit of that spirit during the Super Bowl.

[Thanks to Robert Powell, blogger on retirement for the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch site, where this post originally appeared.)

Putting Money in Perspective

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Many of the elders grew up in the Great Depression, and they knew what it was like to live on almost nothing. But there was something else they learned: you could be very happy with almost nothing if you had a loving family, a supportive neighborhood, and you weren’t competing with a lot of other people who had more than you did.

Maybe this is why so many of the life lessons of the elders had to do with not over-valuing material things. They don’t want us all to be starving artists, but they want you not to be ruled by possessions or an overwhelming urge to make money.

Ed, 76, a retired engineer, told me:

You don’t want your things to own you. The best example that I can give you is my mother and father. Their house was their idol. All the stuff in it was pristine and laid out and my mother saved every book she ever read, every lesson plan, everything she’d ever done, and the house was chock full of all kinds of stuff. Some really good stuff, but, after my father died we took a few things and all the rest went into the dumpster. All that worry, all that thought. And it’s hard to shake. You look at all the stuff and think ‘all this crap owns me, I’m a prisoner of it.’ There’s a lesson in this that I hoped I’ve learned while I’m still alive. I’m not owned by expensive things because they’re expensive.

Micah, 77, stressed not choosing work just for the paycheck:

That was always the way people that measured a success when we were young. Some people went to college but most people went to work. They got a job and went to work, and everything revolved around ‘what are you earning? what are you making?’ and stuff like that. So  the more money you made the more successful you were. And that became of more importance than ‘what should I do with my life? what do you want to develop? what do you want to learn?’ But by learning and experiencing that part of your life, you’re going to be doing something you like doing, you want to do, and money follows. Money follows.

That’s the way it works. And if money doesn’t follow, you’re doing something you like anyway. When I was a kid, down the street we had a shoemaker. He was a father with his kids and they all did the shoes, leather soles and stuff, and they were a pretty cool family. They loved working there. They were making shoes and fixing shoes. So there’s ways to be happy without having to be this big shot corporate guy.

A Key Piece of Elder’s Marriage Advice: Choose Carefully

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I’m fascinated by the issue of regret. On the one hand, it’s challenging to deal with regret, and for some people regrets can drag them down in later life. But regret also serves a highly useful function: It helps us avoid mistakes in the future. One very common strategy for “regret prevention” among the elders had to do with finding a life partner. Over and over, elders told me that the most important thing about this critical life decision is: choose carefully, or you will regret it.

Virginia, 73, wanted to make sure her message about not rushing into marriage was strongly conveyed to younger people. Born into rural poverty, she lost her father at age 6. Her mother remarried, had two more children, and Virginia became a caretaker.

I had big responsibilities for a child my age. I took care of the kids, and I can remember when, I think I was in sixth grade, and my mother was not completely well. I mean, she had dizzy spells, and she would keep me home from school a day or two a week to take care of the little ones. I’d get up in the morning and she’d ask me to stay home from school that day. In some ways, I have been a caretaker all my life. It seems like I’m always taking care of someone.

Virginia describes rushing into marriage as one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make, and we should take her words seriously. She’s done it twice.

The first time, I got married to get away from home. I married young, I was only eighteen. I had started college in the mid-1950s, but lack of money and circumstances just didn’t allow me to continue, and I didn’t know what to do or where to go. I wanted to join the service. And my stepfather said no, and this was in the fifties, you understand, so I listened and I didn’t, but I knew I could no longer live at home. So there was this fellow I’d been going with, and we up and got married the week I turned eighteen. I’d had enough, and my stepfather was difficult to get along with. And they wanted my bed actually, and I didn’t know where to go, what to do, so I got married.

Well, two children and eleven years later, we divorced. It wasn’t a wise decision to marry him but it was an out for me at that time. So please, tell younger people: Don’t marry so young, get an education any way you possibly can. It’s easier in today’s world then it was back then. But when it comes to marriage, don’t rush into things. Give it time before you jump in.

After the divorce, Virginia remarried. Unfortunately, she admitted: “And that was a mistake too. I haven’t had the best luck.” Again, the problem was making the decision too quickly.

I rushed into something I later regretted, it was in the middle 1960s, and my first husband was an alcoholic and he had become very abusive. I decided to return to school, and I was taking courses. I wanted to go to school, get my teaching degree, and then I could leave my first husband and support my children and myself. But it just got so bad I had to leave, and I met this fellow, and there again I rushed into things. It was a way out and my kids liked him.

Well, at first it was good, but after that it was pretty bad. He had girlfriends, he ran around on me, he, oh, he didn’t work, he didn’t provide. So I knew that I had made the same mistake again. By marrying too soon, not knowing the person, he wasn’t what I thought he was. I was really taken in.

I haven’t had an easy time of it, frankly. But maybe I can help others understand. Here’s my advice to the people looking to get married. When you get to be like me in your seventies you realize that life is too short. One of my biggest regrets is wasted opportunities and the need to see that if you’re not happy in a situation you need to change it. I could have made a major difference in my life if I had chosen my husbands carefully, really gotten to know them before committing to the relationships. Know the person in and out before you get married. You think nowadays that you can get out of it easily, but that’s not always the case.

(Do you have marriage advice? Please share it on our new site!

“If We Don’t Forgive…” Sr. Clare’s Advice

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Sr. Clare, 83, has been a nun for over six decades. She has devoted her life to helping the poor and to the spiritual life. When asked what older people are likely to regret, she told me:

I think generally speaking; unfinished business with others or with what they wanted to do or be. For example, not asking about family history, or failing to pay attention to family stories. Failing to have important talks with people, especially around forgiveness or assurance of one’s regard for them, and failing to forgive or reconcile.

There’s a wonderful saying – I  can’t remember the person who wrote this but something about: “If we do not forgive, we keep the person imprisoned in our heart and our heart becomes a hardened prison.”  

Don’t Worry about What Everyone Else Thinks

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Winona, 72, tells younger people that they need to be true to themselves, rather than trying to please everyone else.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that when I was younger I paid much too much attention to what everybody else thought. I didn’t always do what I thought was best. Instead, I often did what everybody else thought I should be doing. And every time I stood my ground and did what I thought I ought to be doing, I did better and things went better. I cared too much about what other people thought about my profession and about me as a person. I think that’s the biggest lesson and it spills over into so many different things.

And that led me to another another life lesson: that following the rules doesn’t always get you where you want to go. There are ways of staying within the boundaries of legality without following every single rule that your mother laid down for you. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken and I think I paid a little too much attention to the rules. They got me quite far, but I think I would have gotten much farther had I not paid attention to the rules, not caring whether people like what you are doing.

Don’t Rush into Marriage

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The elders have seen many people rush into marriage – and they believe that’s a big mistake. They exhort us to think twice, three times, or however many times it takes before you take the step into marriage. Investigate it more thoroughly than any other decision, weigh your options, and in particular examine your motives. If you are doing it for the wrong reasons, you have every reason to wait.

Henry, 82, told me:

I don’t know what set of rules or guidelines to use to ascertain who is the best life partner for you, but don’t be hasty, take your time. Let the partner know you’re taking your time. Invite the partner also to take his or her time. Don’t be hasty, try to avoid pitfalls down the road.

If you take your time you can at least be somewhat surer of selecting a life mate correctly and not capriciously. This can let you avoid the business of divorce or separation – divorce is a very unpleasant process. So try to be very selective in your life partner early on and avoid if possible the trauma and the unpleasantness associated with divorce.

Roxanne, 74, urges people to fight the urge to get married just because “everyone else is doing it”:

Of course, you have to pick the right person. When I married my husband he was – well I just felt there was nobody like him. And I wanted to feel that way the rest of my life. Because of the way I felt about him, I wanted to be a good wife, good mother, good grandmother, and so far God has allowed me to be that. I just think you have to have a lot of love, true love. But what a lot of young people don’t know these days is what true love is and what commitment is. And when they say, “I do,” what it is they are really saying? Younger people think they have to get married because somebody else got married, one of their friends got married, or whatever. That’s not what it’s all about. And that is a serious mistake.

Rushing to quickly into marriage was one of the major regrets expressed by the elders in 30 Lessons for Living. So it’s worth thinking twice (or more) before saying “I do!”

Your turn: Can you advise one of our readers?

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In an earlier post, we shared Bertrille’s regrets about her work life. Jenny commented on the post, sharing her own struggles to find a place in the world of work. Although our elders in the Legacy Project can’t respond to individual questions – can you? Does anyone have some life wisdom to share? Please comment to share your thoughts. Below is the original post, and Jenny’s comment follows.

Sometimes the elder’s lessons come not from what they did right, but from what they felt they did wrong. They advise younger people not to do as they did. So it is in this lesson about finding work that has meaning for you.

Bertrille, 69, flirted with a number of careers over the course of her life, from graduate school in the humanities, to work in research , eventually training as a nurse and practicing in several different settings. Her main regret is never having taken the time and energy to learn  what type of work she would find meaningful and even love:

Work for me? Well, you know, some people have careers and they find what they love to do. For me, work was to make money to do the things I wanted. It didn’t really have much value to me. And I’m very sad to be in my sixties and to have to say that, but it’s really the truth. I worked to live, I didn’t find anything in it that held a lot of meaning to me. I drifted from one thing to another and never really found a purpose.

So I feel sad, I feel very sad about that. I wish I could’ve found something that I really enjoyed but I didn’t do that.

When I look back on my life, I have one area of regret and that is I listened too much to what other people told me to do. I think people have to follow their own instincts about who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what they have to offer. You should not listen too much to what other people tell you to do. I have to deal with that sense of lost purpose.

Here’s what Jenny wrote in her comment. Do you have any life lessons to offer her?

Dear Bertrille, thank you for sharing your life lessons.

I am currently 34 year old and I am one of those who has moved from job to job because I didn’t like the previous one. 3 Years ago, I realized I must stop wasting time and do something more meaningful in my life. I know I want to make a difference in other’s life, particular to those less privileged.

Determined and ambition as I always am, I got myself into a Tier 1 MBA program, aiming to build a more rounded skill-set and a strong network so I can have a good foundation to get started on my life ambition. I dream to establish an institution that teaches and builds people’s character through simulated activities, particularly for disadvantage children in various parts of the world. I see that many people in influential positions today do not exemplify good character such as integrity, courage and compassion. They often get to where they are because of their privileged background and network, without many tests and trials in their lives. It is very disappointing reality for me. I want the institution to raise the awareness that character building is first and foremost and through various activities to instill admirable characters to young children.

As I have no money to start, I tried leveraging on my network to find job opportunities in existing organizations of similar purpose/field and wait till the right moment to start. Maybe it’s the current state of the economy or just bad luck, I joined 4 organizations so far, none of them were able to offer a full-time role. Now, a year and a half after my graduation, I am penniless and with a huge school loan to pay back. The reality of life keeps haunting me and thank goodness I do not need to support a family. I am now applying to any job that I see fit to my previous banking background as I must deal with the reality of life. Yet nothing comes my ways, except a few small consulting projects here and there which is hardly predictable nor able to cover my basic expenses. In my most despair moment, I’d ask myself what’s wrong with me? How big is the price to pursue my dream? Why wouldn’t anyone wants to hire a motivated and highly-skilled with individual? And many more such questions…

I am not giving up my dream. But my question is, what would you do if you were me at this juncture of life?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Very gratefully,

Jenny

Do You Have Advice for One of Our Readers? Let’s Hear It!

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One of our readers, Lucy, posted a great comment on “Liza’s List for Living.” Lucy was impressed with Liza’s independence and her advice to live life on your own terms.

Lucy’s comment is below. In it, she asks if Liza could correspond with her further. We replied that the names provided to the elders on this blog are in most cases pseudonyms (to protect people’s confidentiality) and that that getting a response from a particular elder is unlikely.

But I wanted to pose her question to you, our readers! Does anyone have wisdom for Lucy on the issues she raises? If so, look at Liza’s List for Living, and then comment away! Here’s Lucy’s post:

Liza: Thank you for your list. Having read it several times I find I agree with every point. I have come to similar conclusions and find the confirmation of these ideas very reassuring at this stage of my life. I feel strongly about being independent and having a life of my own and contributing to humanity in ways outside a conventional marriage. It’s not so easy to find many that agree so I really appreciate coming across your words. Although at 26 I haven’t ruled out having children (and I get annoyed with the amount of time my brain seems to want to spend on that question) I am certain I want to throw myself into an alternative project first.

If you are out there, and it is possible, I wonder if you would be willing to correspond further?