When I see my kids growing up and doing interesting things I can't help but regret some of the ways I spent my youth. Not to mention the ways I spend my time now. But regrets are funny things because although I might wish I had done some things differently, I'm sure that the person that I am today would also be different if I had, and in that case I would still have regrets but they would be different ones. I'm overall quite content with my life right now and maybe if I had done things differently I wouldn't be. So these are some things I regret.
I wish I hadn't lived my teenage years in a fog of social oblivion. I see how socially awkward my teenage kids are and I want them to just act normal, even though when I was their age I was incapable of carrying on a coherent coversation with a girl my age. I would get nervous, and then look for the abort button but hit the self-destruct button instead. This still happens to me often when I talk to Rachelle. I say something obtuse, look for the "abort" button and end up hitting "self-destruct". But back to high-school. I wish I had learned to dance. Then I might not have felt so out of place at dances and social events. I missed out on all high-school social activity because of this social anxiety. Come to think of it, college wasn't much better. I didn't have much of a clue socially until I was well into my 20s.
Running is an activity that I enjoy now and I've found that I'm better at it than most people. I wish I had run cross-country or something in high-school. I wonder how good I could have been if I had dedicated some time to running when I was younger. It would have been nice to be involved in a sport instead of just academics. I might have had more friends and it might have helped with the social anxiety. One time the basketball coach pulled me out of the nerd court in gym class where I was dominating and put me on the court with the best players in my grade. I didn't respond well, retreating into my shell, and returning to my comfortable court when I had the opportunity. The coach assumed I wasn't interested in hoops, as I learned when he was my drivers-ed instructor. Now I wonder how good I could have been at basketball if I had let him know I desperately wanted to play. One more athletic regret is not learning to play volleyball sooner. Toward the end of my time in college I roomed with some guys who played in the park all the time, and those were some of the best times. I'm thrilled that Brita tried the tennis team this year and that she wants to improve and play next year. That's something I never had the courage to do at her age.
I wish I had asked to learn guitar when I was a kid. I learned piano, and I'm glad I did, but I never loved it. I knew my dad had a guitar and I was curious about it but it never ocurred to me to ask to learn to play it. I guess I figured that I was already being forced to learn one instrument, so why would I volunteer for another? Now I'm learning it, and it's a good way to relax for a few minutes every day. I'm not dedicated enough to get good, but what would it be like if some of those hours devoted to Dungeons and Dragons, or even piano had been spent learning guitar? It's awesome that my kids are learning instruments and they even have the experience of performing in a band where they are key members. That takes a kind of courage I'm not sure I had.
Debate is another activity at which I excel and I love to do it. The debate coach in high school recruited me heavily but I turned him down because I didn't want to take early morning seminary in order to fit it in. I missed out on an activity that would have helped me immensely in my confidence because of sheer laziness. Now I take out my frustrations by baiting people with controversial posts on Facebook and destroying them with my logic. I could have been great.
When I did my MBA I had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. I would do everything different if I had it to do over. At the time I saw it as so many hoops to jump through. I put off taking Advanced Corporate Finance until my last semester because the teacher had a reputation as tough. It turned out to be the best class I had taken in my entire life. I loved it and it was too late to take more classes from Hal Heaton, or explore my new interest in finance. If I had done that I might not have ever gone to med school and my career path would look very different, so it all worked out for the best. I took a similar lazy approach to religion classes at BYU. They were low-priority for me so I ended up taking whatever class was convenient. As a result I ended up with glorified sunday school classes taught by professors from other departments moonlighting in religion. I checked the box, but I missed out on the opportunity to take classes from great Mormon scholars that might have inspired me and changed my outlook on life.
What am I doing or not doing today that I will regret? Someday soon my kids will be all grown up and I hope they don't remember me as the guy who worked all the time and then just wanted to be left alone to watch sports, surf the net or write blog posts. That's it, I'm out.
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