What do you want on your Tombstone?

I know. Cheesy, right? (Ha, ha. Very punny....)

More seriously, I'm thinking today about "ending well". The mother of a dear friend of mine passed away a couple of weeks ago, and I attended her memorial service at about this time last week. She was elderly, but it was still unexpected, and tough to process. The family rallied beautifully, though, and the service has had me pondering all week.

What do I want out of life? When it's almost over and I'm looking back, what will cause me to feel satisfied and fulfilled and what will cause me regret or shame? Speaking of shame, are there any boundaries around what I "should" want out of life? Is there an "ought" in here somewhere? Or am I free to just want whatever I want and be done with it?

Skipping over a lot of the Goldilocks action (trying ideas on for size...), the resolution for me is this: I have the right to want whatever I want, but I do not have the right to have someone else pick up the tab for my choices. It's up to me to make my life work on the terms I have chosen, and if life doesn't turn out the way I thought/hoped/expected it would, then I have to deal with the consequences.

I would rather not wait until the end of my road to realize I took a wrong turn. The "arrow of time" means you don't get a do-over, you don't get to just keep trying until you get it right. You get one shot, and then you move on to Whatever's Next. I don't want to have to make all my own mistakes--I'd rather learn as much as possible from others who have already been where I am now.

The only good way I can think of to do that is to find people 20 or more years older than I am (basically, a generation ahead) and find out how they're doing, especially in light of the mistakes they've made and the disappointments they've dealt with. The regrets of an older person whose life plan didn't work out (or who, having had no plan, starts asking the right questions too late), are important intel for the next generation. (So are the satisfactions of someone whose life turned out well, but they may not want the things I want or value the things I value. I'm more interested in preventable mistakes and the memes in our culture that turn out to be wrong.)

So here's my plan and some unsolicited advice for the youngers: Find older people. Ask them if they are happy. Ask them if they think their lives were lived well. Beware of the human tendency to take credit for success and shift blame for failure. If things went well, they may have just been in the right place at the right time. If things went poorly, it may be because they just flat screwed up, even if they have a list of reasons why it wasn't their fault. Ask questions like:

Is this how you thought you'd end up?
Did you have a plan, or did you just react to circumstances?
What would you change if you could?
Was there any specific decision you made that in 20/20 hindsight was (a) brilliant, or (b) awful?
Different frame: What's the best decision you made and the worst one?
If you could warn younger people of one pitfall to avoid, what would it be?
What activities and accomplishments have brought you the most real joy?

I could go on, but you get my point. Make your own list, if you want, but make a list and go find some older people to talk to. That's where I'm headed....

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Afterthought note to youngers from someone who's Not That Old, but old enough to have observed a few things:

Do not set your course according to:
1. the pooled ignorance of your peers, who don't know any more than you do, or
2. the advertising gimmicks of people who are trying to sell you things.

Find some old people. Talk to them. Better yet: Listen to them. You'll be glad you did.