I have a few friends who I correspond with once in every great while. I really appreciate the lenses these people provide to me.
Recently, I had the opportunity to check in with one who is a woman in her second half of life. I always appreciate her candor.
She wrote (details obfuscated to preserve anonymity):
"You have mentioned several times in videos about middle aged women having regrets about their life choices. I can honestly say that I don't regret my choices.
- I don't regret getting married at 19.
- I don't regret quitting college to get married.
- I don't regret having [many] kids and not a career.
- I don't regret marrying the man I did.
- I don't regret moving out of [a big city to a small town many] years ago.
- I don't regret separating myself from [the church I grew up in], even though it causes my heart to ache."
I responded:
"I am very glad to hear that you are happy with your life decisions. It sounds like you are part of the rare set of ladies who made all the big ones correctly, and now get to spend the second half of life reaping the rewards. I hope you talk to lots of young ladies and offer your advice to them, because while what we wish we did instead is always good advice, hearing a person testify of what they did correctly is always much better."
Commentary
What a blessing it is to have what you want and want what you have! All people should strive to be able to say what this lady can, about whatever their decisions have been.
I am always very glad for communications that help me see that I am not saying things as clearly as I would like. This happens often. I am trying to be better at reducing the flood of ideas and emotions constantly flowing through me into finite text, but I am still very flawed at it. As my wife has said a few times during our life together (not infrequently during an example of my very strange sense of humor), "you know that no one understands what you mean, right?" It's almost a given!
In this case, to clarify:
- I do not think that all middle aged women are full of regrets about decisions they've made. Obviously, there are women who have made excellent choices, and some (like this woman) who have managed to get 100% on the test. You can imagine groups of women who could say they are happy with who they married, but not when, or when they married, but not who, are happy with how many kids they had, but not who they married, etc. The goal for all people: live life with no regrets, ecstatic about the choices you've made in life.
- The point I've tried to make is that the consequences of the decisions in a woman's life tend to be obscured until they hit middle age, then seem to be revealed in abundance all around the same time. This is different from the consequences of the decisions of men, which seem to reveal themselves on more evenly distributed timelines.
- I think middle aged women are a vastly under-appreciated resource for wisdom for men and women. I hope that future times will include a recognition of the many women among us who have accumulated a great deal of wisdom through their experiences.
- Those who possess wisdom ought to be sought and valued by all people proportional to the volume and worth of the wisdom they possess. This goes for men, too, though--as I have said--men don't tend to get a sudden dispensation of wisdom around a certain age.
- Male wisdom seems to occur more independently of age. There are plenty of male fools in every age group, though I suppose you could argue that, at least traditionally, the particularly foolish males struggle to survive much more than a particularly foolish woman would, thanks to the way attraction and marriage work. I suppose one could argue that modern technology helps foolish men survive while providing increased opportunity for foolish women to meet their demise.
Finally, someone is going to read all of this and say "can't young women be wise?" Of course! All people are capable of living to obtain full access to wisdom from God, and would to God that all people would!
As for the potential, if I didn't believe it was possible for young women to become wise, I wouldn't spend so much time trying to give advice that would help them.
As for actuality, I can't think of one. Every example that comes close features significant and obvious blunders that could and should have been avoided.
I believe it is much harder to do what is right as a young woman than it is as a young man due to the terrible incentives and false traditions of modern society, even though it is difficult for both. That being said, every person still has everything they need to figure it out and do the right thing. Do young men do better? As a class, no, but do I know individuals doing better? Yes. The reasons for this are explored in videos I have produced.