Regrets

1. I regret not taking better care of my friendships. With so many moves, we connected with lots of people.  And then we disconnected.  I wish I had nurtured more of those connections so that they were still alive.
2. I regret the times I thought it more important to be right than to be kind.
3. I regret not understanding, when I was in middle of school, that learning was for me, not some registrar. For example, it never occurred to me that I was studying French so that I could speak French, not fulfill the language requirement. Sad to say, I do not speak French today.
4. I regret not having developed a deep expertise. I have, as you can see,  had wonderful, interesting work that has taught me so much, but at 70, I am not an expert at anything and it would be nice to be master of some corner of the universe.
5. I think my regrets are mostly minor because we have been prudent and sensible in our lives. I regret more what I have not done than what I have done. Experience has no equal, and I hope in the coming years, I can conjure up more great experiences.

Seventy is NOT the new fifty, but maybe it is the new seventy.  For the first time in decades, I seem able to balance work and play, to learn for the satisfaction of it without regard to productivity and to rekindle the wonder that was part of childhood.  I am taken with a Montaigne quote I read recently:  “Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself.”