Insight: Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Last week I saw a list shared on social media that was compiled by a hospice nurse who spent her career dealing with individuals who were dying and later wrote a book about it. Knowing that their time on earth was dwindling, the dying passed on their regrets about their lives.

According to this nurse, the top five common regrets were not at all what she expected.

They included wishing they had the courage to live a life true to themselves, and not the life others expected of them by their family or friends. They also wished that they hadn’t spent so much of their lives working, wished they would have had the ability to truly express their feelings, wished they had kept in better touch with friends, and wished they had let themselves enjoy life more and be happier.

During a national study conducted in 2011, Americans were asked to describe a significant life regret, and the most common reported regrets involved romance (19.3 percent), family (16.9 percent), education (14 percent), career (13.8 percent), finances (9.9 percent), and parenting (9.0 percent).

It occurs to me that all the regrets mentioned above involve personal relationships and I can understand that.

As humans, we all share the common experience of living and interacting with others. Since taking our first breath, we all have been part of the routine of life, and everything associated with it. How we relate to others, however, is a choice, and so is how happily we live our lives. There are people we meet along the way that influence the decisions we make and shape our reactions and directly affect our happiness and lives.

By the time I was 15, I had already figured out what I wanted to do for a career but many adult figures in my life wanted to steer me to choices they felt were better for me. During sophomore English class, my teacher, Ruth Silverman, suggested I was a good writer and encouraged me to explore a career in journalism. Now 49 years into my newspaper career, I’ve never regretted that decision, but I do regret not being able to tell her what great advice it was.

She left the school for another teaching position after that school year, and I have no idea where she went. I’ve tried my best through the years to track her down and tell her about my life and career without success. I’ve asked the school system, former teachers at the school, and looked extensively online but have been unable to find her and probably never will.

For many years, I also regretted that I never had a chance to tell other teachers that helped me along the way how much I valued and appreciated them. However, I was able to tell my high school basketball coach Gene Monje that in 2006 and several years later, he invited me to give his introduction speech at the Section V Basketball Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Rochester, New York.

I also had a long-standing regret when I was younger about my high school music teacher Giles Hobin. His chorus class was transformational for me when I reached high school. From the first day, he treated me like an adult and inspired me to appreciate music. I wanted to thank him years later but didn’t know where he was.

In the spring of 2001, my classmate Janet Howland sent me a newspaper clipping of a Letter to the Editor he had written, and it listed his home address, which was the same as it had been for years. I sat down and wrote him a letter saying that unlike other students on the first day of college, I felt totally prepared because of teachers like him and was ready for the challenge. I mailed it to him and expected to hear back from him, but months passed without a response.

As I was getting ready to fly to Rochester to attend a wedding in late October 2001, Janet Howland emailed me to tell me that Giles Hobin had died. I was crushed and saddened that I would never have an opportunity to speak to him again. I was able to attend his funeral service with some of my classmates and as I went through a reception line meeting my teacher’s family, something remarkable happened.

As I shook his son Shawn’s hand in the reception line, he turned and told his mother who I was. She smiled and hugged me and said that she wanted to tell me something.

“Of course, Giles was thrilled to receive your letter,” she said. “It meant the world to him, and he kept it on his nightstand. He wanted to write you back but couldn’t because of his illness. I offered to write it for him, but he insisted that he would write you back, but he never got the chance to do so.”

The experience of being human means interacting with many different personalities to chart your own path in this world. I’ve made plenty of mistakes over time and have made many decisions I wish I could regret, but instead I’ve chosen to be happy and continue moving ahead.

Insight: Weighing my options

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I admit it, there are times where I struggle with indecision. Faced with a dizzying array of options and choices for nearly every subject or issue, making the right selection has never been easy for me. 

It seems that I’m not alone in sizing up this dilemma. Results are in from the American Psychological Association’s annual survey of things that stress Americans out and about one-third of survey respondents listed “making a basic decision” as an issue they struggle with every day.

For those of us in this category, we can spend hours just perusing lists of television shows to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney, or Apple+ channels. With that much content and programs to focus in on, indecision reigns supreme.

At times my wife has taken to reading a book while I scroll through the menu for Netflix. If I go over five minutes to choose something, she’ll stop and remind me that we’ve already watched a selection I’m pondering over.

Typically, I’ll fall into a routine of watching a television series to simplify my choice, but when we’ve watched all the episodes available, then once again I’m back to the indecisiveness of having to select another one.

The same struggle ensues when I hit the ice cream aisle at the supermarket. There are so many flavors, so many brands and so many options that come into play when I open that freezer door to make a choice of what to purchase and take home.

For my parents, the choice of what half gallon of ice cream to pick was always easy. My mother preferred vanilla and my father enjoyed strawberry while my brother and I liked chocolate. Therefore, when it came time for my parents to choose a selection for ice cream at the grocery store, they always picked “Neapolitan” with all three flavors included.

Through the years, I’ve found that opening the closet door to pick out items to wear for each day to also be a difficult task. I know enough to try and coordinate colors but have little fashion sense otherwise.

Between choosing a pullover sweater, a V-neck sweater, a button-down collared shirt, or a Henley collar shirt gives me the “Willies.” Do I wear jeans or pants, plaid or corduroy, long sleeve, or short sleeve?

No matter what clothing options are available to me, it is never an easy choice for me to make.

That’s why I preferred my clothing options when I served in the U.S. Air Force. There I had just two simple choices. If it was a formal occasion or I had to work indoors, I wore our blue uniform. For working outside, I wore our green fatigue uniform.

Imagine my indecision while driving and wanting to listen to music on the radio. My Hyundai Sonata came equipped with a Sirius XM radio system with thousands of channels available to me.

Early on, I chose to preset my car radio to avoid listening to thousands of snippets of songs or conversations and constantly fiddling with the radio dial to find something to settle on.

Even doing that, I’m torn between listening to commercial-free 1960s music, 1970s music, 1980s music, 1990s music, The Highway (country music), and an all-news channel or the Major League Baseball channel. There are only six preset buttons on my radio dial and during the summer, I’ve also been known to listen to live baseball games being broadcasted if I make a long drive somewhere.

As a newspaper editor, I have frequently questioned selections I have been forced to make regarding photographs that appear in the paper. Many times, it’s clear what choice to make for publication, but when it’s not, second-guessing can create genuine turmoil for me in wondering if I have chosen the right one or not.

No matter what the subject or the issue, having to make a decision on deadline for the newspaper is never easy when I have an assortment of great photographs to select from.

Every day the responsibility to make an immediate decision can be mind boggling when you are indecisive.

I had to get stamps at the post office and the clerk asked me which stamps I preferred, flags, sunflowers, squirrels, Women’s History Month, blueberries, or the Lunar New Year were available and a line half a mile long was standing and waiting behind me.

Imaging looking over the immense greeting card selection at Walmart or Walgreens for Valentine’s Day and trying to decide which card is right for this year? Or looking at a Chinese restaurant menu online and trying to select the right type of soup to go with my choice of meal.

As I’ve gotten older, a lot of my decision making is based upon experience or comes down to flipping a coin. I’ve also been known to take some time to think things over and weigh all the possibilities and potential outcomes when I have a difficult decision to make regarding a work situation. My inner voice always tries to convince myself that I’m confident in the choices that I must make no matter what.    

Now to determine what to fix for dinner tonight. Or not. <  

Insight: A problem; a privilege by Lorraine Glowczak

I have always admired those individuals who knew from the moment they were born what they were going to do with their one, wild and crazy life. That has never been my experience. I popped into the world seeing everything as a possibility and an adventure to be had.

While I enjoy this quirk about myself, there are a few downsides when one has too many passions. The biggest challenge is the inability to choose from all the possibilities available. The name they give this “problem” is analysis paralysis.

I’m getting better in this arena but some days the challenge returns, reminding me that my quirk still exists. The “problem” returned recently as I did a google search on a new side venture I’m contemplating. My research led me to “What to do when you have too many passions and you feel stuck as a result.”

I had once believed that my analysis paralysis was a unique issue for me and a few unlucky others. However, my research has taught me otherwise. I discovered a multitude of online magazine articles from Forbes.com and Entreprenuer.com to blogs that delve into ways to act when you have too many choices. In fact, wanting to do everything - at least once - is more common than the more focused among us.

As I continued in my research, I began to realize that those of us who face this conundrum are from western cultures. I never once came across a blog written by a woman in Syria or a man from South Sudan who were contemplating what option to do next or which passion they should pursue. Instead, I only found that the major challenges faced by those from struggling or war-torn cultures were much more complex. Survival of self and family seemed to be their focus.

In the website, /www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/01/18-refugees-18-countries, I found the following statements from individuals who simply want a calm and normal life:

“I’d like it that the war ends and then we can go looking for my parents. If I have to stay here in Uganda, then I hope that we get enough to eat, and we stay safe….”

“I hope to return to normal life, a life where I’m not constantly nervous, where the ground is not constantly giving way. Leaving home has created so much instability. You can’t predict anything from one moment to the next. Now, what you do doesn’t equal what you get.”

“I wish 2018 is a year of peace, with justice and more compassion for all the refugees in the world. I wish people around the world would return to their hearts as human beings.”

After reading all the statements from those driven out of their native homelands, it dawned on me how very privileged I am to live in a land where I get the opportunity of having too many options. 

My “problem” of being paralyzed to act as a result, seems somehow frivolous now. Instead, “my problem” has become my motivating force, seeing it as an opportunity to move in the direction I deem important – and a calling. And, I’ll stop complaining. I promise.