A Conversation with My Younger Self

What could you have done differently?

A few weeks ago, I saw a one-man show starring Chris Pierce—an obscure singer/songwriter of considerable talent—at the local Center for the Arts. Chris is a mixed blood black man, born in segregated times in a segregated place. His most enduring memory was etched into him at the age of five, when a group of enraged white men broke into his house through his bedroom window intending to punish his mom and dad for daring to be together, and worse, bringing a mixed-race child into the world. His dad somehow repelled them, but little Chris—now very big Chris (about six-five, three-fifty)—still has that terrified little guy within him, never more than a heartbeat away. 

About an hour into his show, during a soulful story having something to do with regret, he asked the audience, “What would you say if you could have a conversation with your younger self?”

The question stuck in my mind. What would I say? What advice would I give? What failures could I have avoided? What opportunities missed could have changed my life forever had I seen them? 

What were my life’s pivotal moments? Marriage, and later divorce? Joining the Army at eighteen? Leaving the Army at twenty-nine? Getting fired from an important job? Accepting that job in the first place? At what points in my life did I make bad decisions, and what could I have done about them?

Or maybe it wasn’t decisions. Maybe it was something about me, a character trait, which, if corrected, could have turned me to a better path. I was a bit of a loner (still am, truth be told). Could I have learned to be more sociable? I had a tendency for avoiding conflict, which used to make me back off sometimes when maybe I should have stood my ground. Could I have done something about that? As a kid, I was pretty shy and missed out on some relationships (and some pretty girls) that might have brightened my life. Should I advise young-me how to fix these parts of my personality?

I haven’t had many enemies, but there were a few whom I didn’t recognize until too late. Should I warn young-me about them?

Maybe some stock market tips? Maybe some things that could have been avoided in Viet Nam? There’s certainly some advice I could give that would ease the heart attack that damn near killed me at age forty-eight.

I wonder…would young-me have listened to old-me? Would I have been open to advice, even from myself? I don’t remember if I was a good listener or open to new ideas in my younger days, especially ideas about things I needed to change. I might have resented the advice, seeing it as intrusion and insult, rather than helpful guidance. 

And now I’m wondering…would I really want to have that conversation? Now that I’m thinking more deeply about it, I don’t think I want my life to be different, and I don’t want to be a different me. At the age of eighty-one, I’m getting to like myself and the way I’m turning out. And my wife, Ali, still wants to hang out with me so I can’t be all that bad. 

I suspect that if I tried to fix my regrets, I would simply create new ones. We live and we make mistakes. If we correct those mistakes, we’ll still make others. And I need to remind myself that I also did a lot of smart things, some of them on purpose, some of them just lucky.

If I had gone a different way, my daughters would never have existed, and the world, not just me, would be poorer for that. I never would have made the military my first stab at a career, and that would be a huge loss of my most formative experiences and amazing memories. I might have had fewer failures, but most of my important life lessons were learned from failures. I might have been able to avoid my heart attack, but now that I think of it, my life needed serious interrupting at that point, and anything less than a heart attack might not have done the trick. Don’t get me wrong; nobody wants a heart attack, but I did need a dramatic shift in my trajectory, and it got the job done.

I really like my life. I’ve had my share of ups and downs, but it has been and still is a good life. I don’t want to go back and mess it up. I also don’t think I want future-me coming back to have a conversation with now-me, and messing up whatever is yet to come.

If fate ever gives me the opportunity to talk with my younger self, I think I’ll skip it.