My friend Julie Gammack, the liberal Iowa columnist, always preaches that older folks should live their lives as if they have just two years to live.
That’s why she and her husband Dick Gilbert are on a big sailboat on Chesapeake Bay right now.
My daughter Shelli Johnson, who is a life coach, says a similar thing only she shortens it to six months.
They are talking about how to finish your life. The topic of this column is similar but different: How would you like the chance to live your life over? How would you do it?
It seemed appropriate that I started to write this column on the longest day of the year – June 20, 2025.
How To Define Perfect Life
This is my attempt to define a perfect life and how important it is to aspire to live that perfect life.
I write this as a new great-grandfather for our fifth great grandchild. I am writing this for her, plus our 13 grandchildren and all those other descendants who are not here yet.
My most important conclusion is that the greatest wealth a man can acquire in his lifetime is a healthy and loving family. Nothing else comes close.
So just how “deep” should I make this essay? Well, here goes:
In recent years I have been hanging out with some folks who contend your most important goals in life should be finding truth, goodness, and beauty.
Truth, Goodness, Beauty
Looking back on a career in journalism, it is easy to agree about the importance of truth. Rarely is truth relative. When all the facts are in, truth will usually rise to the top.
When I was younger, I loved the concept that all things were relative, which means just about everything was determined by the situation. After years of dealing with life, you realize that relativism is over-rated.
There are absolute truths in this world and you need to find them out and then live your life accordingly. There is right versus wrong. There is good versus bad. Character and ethics are real and both will help you find the truth.
In my life, I did not have to look too far to find real goodness. My wife Nancy of 59 years is the best person I have ever known. How on earth I ever found her is a big mystery to me.
Let’s hope all you folks out there reading this have been as fortunate when it comes to relationships.
Nancy is a Jefferson Award recipient for all the good she has done in raising money to fight cancer and helping the needy with the Christmas food basket program for 30 years in Lander.
When it comes to beauty, I say just open your eyes. We live in a beautiful place populated by beautiful people.
In recent years, I have worked with 54 Wyoming-based photographers. I love their outlook when it comes to Wyoming.
A great many of them love a foggy day or a hard rain or a heavy snow because of the opportunities it gives them to photograph our beautiful landscape in a new way.
Now, I try very hard to not complain about the weather. This is difficult, as I get older.
All Those Toys
If I had my life to live over, I would not have squandered so much money and time on toys. A big boat comes to mind. Sure, we had a lot of fun with it, but what an expense and what a time suck.
For a long time, I believed that whoever died with the most toys wins. What a joke! I think a better saying would be “he who dies with the most friends wins.”
I should have gotten in better physical shape. This would have allowed me to better explore this wonderful country we live in.
Sure, I have been all over Wyoming from the Medicine Wheel to Medicine Bow and from Pinedale to Pine Bluffs and from Evanston to Evansville, but there are places that are unreachable because of not being in good enough physical condition.
One old-timer once wrote that if she could live her life over, she would have eaten more ice cream and less beans. I think I did eat my quota of ice cream and probably should have been eating more beans.
If I could live my life over, I would not have been so competitive. I was a holy terror to my business competitors and, as a result, they were hard on me.
And even way too competitive with family and friends. Bless your business competitors because they make you better. But it took me way too long to learn that I could get much more done through cooperation rather than through intense competition.
I liken my life to a baseball game and we get to play nine innings. If so, I am hoping this is the middle of the seventh and it is time for a stretch. Maybe time to sing the song Sweet Caroline. Sure hope it is not the bottom of the ninth.
If I had my life to live over, I would find more joy in everything that I did. And I would strive to provide joy to others as a main goal of my life.
