Becoming wise
July 6, 2013
My biggest regret is not living life in my 20s. I was so focused on surviving that I forgot to really live.
It isn’t like I didn’t have opportunities. I didn’t have a child to support until I was 30. I had access to education and every chance to just take off. Do whatever.
In college my friends hitchhiked across Europe or took spring break trips to Mexico or joined traveling drama troupes.
After graduation they pursued their dreams relentlessly, often failing, but loving the experience along the way.
I still don’t even have a passport.
I did leave the state of Montana for eight years. But I didn’t leave the state of fear that held me back from truly soaking in the world around me.
I was practical, sensible, and completely missing the point.
Your 20s is not the time to make due. Your 20s is the time to make it happen, take chances, discover who you really are.
I wanted so badly to feel safe. It took me 30 years to realize that safety can be found almost anywhere. As can danger.
The life I built was predictable, certainly. But it wasn’t necessarily safe.
I longed for something permanent and solid. I got so hung up on the Ever After portion of my fairytale that I forgot about the Happily part.
All I ever wanted was to return to my hometown and raise a family.
It took me 13 years to get home. And I’m happy here doing exactly what I always wanted to do.
But if I was going to take the long way home, I wish I’d taken a more colorful route.
What I want for my own boys is for them to go far and wide in their 20s, when they are young enough to subsist on ramen noodles and adrenaline.
I don’t know how to teach them this. After all these years of just getting by, I simply don’t know how to be any other way.
Thank God for my husband, who did his 20s right. He traveled, stayed single and childless, and focused on living life to the fullest, not in a self-destructive way, but in a self-evaluative way.
We had very similar end goals: marriage, kids, a cozy home – which is why we are so compatible now.
But we took very different paths to get here. I defer to him to teach our boys how to live. I suppose I defer to him to teach me as well.
I think he is up to the task, excited by it even.
He has his work cut out for him. I am an aging dog, more reluctant to learn new tricks with each passing birthday.
The boys, though, they are clean slates. I want them to have the confidence to explore the world in a way I never have.
They may resent me when they graduate high school and I kick them out with a crate of ramen and a smile.
“Go!” I’ll tell them. “Live! Explore! You’ve got 12 years. Become wise.”
This article first appeared in the Lewistown News-Argus and the Sidney (Mont.) Herald on July 6, 2013.