Regrets

Regrets are a natural part of life, especially as one gets older and sees that their health has deteriorated and that the time ahead is much shorter than it was when they were younger. In addition, regrets themselves are not bad, but they certainly can be detrimental to one’s psyche if they are not looked at with a healthy amount of wisdom behind the thinking. In this blog post, I want to talk about regrets in general, and specifically, some of the regrets that I have. As has become the norm for my blog, I will include some cartoons to help illustrate these regrets.

Perhaps a definition of regret(s) is the first thing we should look at to ensure we are all on the same page, as far as the discussion goes. For starters, WordWeb defines regret as “Sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment (noun).” The Bing AI defines regret as “a feeling of sadness or disappointment about something that has happened or something you have done or failed to do. It often involves wishing that you had made a different decision in the past because the outcome of the decision you did make was unfavorable.” It also stated that, “regret can be related to missed opportunities, mistakes, or actions that led to negative consequences. It can vary in intensity and may change over time, often influenced by how much control you felt you had over the situation.”

Well, I can live with those definitions, but as I was pondering this topic prior to writing this blog post, I was mostly thinking of regrets as things I didn’t learn or do, not so much about the outcome of decisions, unfavorable or not, being a disappointment. Afterall, I have enjoyed my life very much, and I would say that the outcome has, indeed, been favorable. As I discuss my regrets below, keep in mind that I am well aware that my life, as it was stated in the Desiderata, is, or has, unfolded just as it should. In case you were wondering, the line from the 1927 poem by Max Ehrmann reads, “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” And yes, I swapped out universe, for “my life,” seemingly the same in this case.

Just as a side note, I did not know of the Desiderata until I met my wife, Denise. When we met, I noticed that she had a poster copy of the poem on her wall and she explained how it had been a force, and a guide, in her life from the first time she encountered it. Denise, in my opinion, embodies the fullness of this text in how she lives. Let’s look at that poem now.

Desiderata: (Original text from the book where Desiderata was first published)

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

by Max Ehrmann ©1927

My greatest regret is that I did not have a workshop for all the days of my life. A workshop to me is a creative sanctuary. It is a space where I can be alone and bring many of my artistic visions to fruition. My ideal shop would include a woodworking area, a metal fabrication area, and an office-like technical area for design and development. Ideally, the shop would be attached to my living space, as in an attached garage, or secondly as a separate but nearby structure if I was on an acreage. In this way, the shop is easily accessible anytime of the day, and it is close enough for my wife to pop out on a regular basis to see what I am up to and to share in my artistic delights.

I was lucky enough to have a garage-style shop from early 1984 until the end of 1989, while I had my home improvement business. In the image below you can see the double car garage and the small shop addition at the far end of the garage. Although the add-on shop had a very low ceiling, I did a lot of work in this small area. When required, I expanded operations into the main garage area. Both garage and shop were fully heated, so year-round usable, and I even had a telephone installed in there. Most of the things I did there were work related, such as cabinet building, but I did take time to work on personal projects too, including vehicle repair. It wasn’t the prettiest place inside, in fact it was rather ugly, but it was mine, and I loved it! 😊

Home with Garage and Attached Shop – Screen Capture from Google Street View 2013.

Note that the house in the image above was owned by my uncle Ron (mom’s youngest brother). My mom and younger brother Doug rented and lived upstairs. Before I married Denise, I rented one of the suites in the basement, and my older brother, Dave, rented the second suite until he moved to another city due to a work transfer. It was a wonderful time to be all living separate lives, but still under the same roof. As you can imagine, we gathered often for tea and celebrations. Note too, that Denise and I had our wedding ceremony in this back yard. A truly spectacular day that was!

The only other time I had a personal shop was in 2018/2019 just before, and shortly after, I retired from work. Denise and I were living in a townhouse style condo at the time and she suggested that I set up a shop in the garage so that I could have the shop experience again and have something to do in my retirement years. Denise had always parked in the garage, so her offer to park on the street and let me do this was very loving. The garage was not heated, so it would not be suitable to use as such in the winter months, but welcome nonetheless. Below, you can see what the small shop looked like. It was a heavenly little place!

Garage Shop 2018/2019 – Photo by Don Cheke

The shop was just perfect, in my humble opinion. Sadly, the shop lasted only one and a half summers, as once I retired, both Denise and I saw that we were going to have to make some changes due to finances. We ended up selling our townhouse condo in the late fall and moved to an apartment style condo, which, of course, has no shop space.

I should mention that I did use the garage at the townhouse-style condo on occasion when I was working for a manufacturing company and brought in products for reverse engineering purposes. This was once or twice a year over the course of ten years. Luckily it was almost always in the summer months. This was before I purchased the woodworking equipment in 2018/2019 that you saw in the earlier image. I loved performing the breakdown of these systems while in the garage. It was always a reminder of how much a shop meant to me.

Crated Systems – Photo by Don Cheke

As I write these words, I am reminded of just how much I miss having the garage shop still available to me. I recognize it as a regret, but it is not something that makes me crazy with regret or depressed in any major way. It is just something I would have liked to experience more fully for a longer period of life. I don’t know if my life would have been different had I had the shop all my life, but I doubt it, since I always remember how I couldn’t usually afford raw materials for projects anyway, but still, I would have made do and still found ways to be creative in there. Does that make sense? In a similar vein, when I enter the land of dream-like fantasy, I envision a huge manufacturing facility (shop) where I could utilize all my skills to earn a living, such as in the mock facility I presented in one of my design talks about plant layout.

Orchard Cabinetry Manufacturing Facility – Modeled & Rendered by Don Cheke

If I am honest, I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that almost all, if not all, of my regrets are/were due to fear. Fear was my family of origin’s legacy. It started with my grandmother, on my mother’s side, who suffered much mental anguish and was almost crippled with fear. My mother was able to get past most of that fear by facing her fears and doing the work necessary to be successful in life. That does not mean that she didn’t have some baggage with regards to fear. Even with my mother making great strides and showing me and my brothers a healthier way to live, I still acquired a healthy, or unhealthy as it were, dose of fear. That said, I too always faced my fears and did the work necessary to succeed in life at all levels. Even still, I can see clearly in my life that fear kept me from things. I suppose that most of my fear was based on not feeling worthy enough, or not deserving enough, or some such thing. I was most fortunate that I met Denise and formed the lasting relationship we did. Denise has always been the fearless one in our family, and it is because of her fearlessness that we purchased our various homes and vehicles over the years and traveled now and again to experience the world around us. Not on a grand scale, but on a scale suitable to us and our finances. I often wonder where I would have been if not for her, but Denise always assures me, based on what she sees in me, that I would have succeeded even if she had not been in my life, because I have always faced my fears and not let them keep me from life. I mostly concur, but I can envision myself being overwhelmed with fear and being paralyzed by it if for some reason I let down my guard, as can happen in life with any mental disability. Sometimes it just sneaks up on a person, and the next thing you know, you’ve an agoraphobic or something like that.

I regret not being more of a risk taker. I wish there had been a way for me to just go for some of the things I desired in life and let the chips fall where they may. As I said above, it just came down to fear, and as I will talk about shortly, a perpetual lack of money. I used to marvel at many of my work colleagues in the United States that I met in the manufacturing world. Many thought/think nothing of moving from the east side of the country to the west side for a job opportunity, or back again to somewhere else as their life weaved through the times. I am blown away by the courage of those that choose to move to another country, let alone another state or province. I met so many clients from the USA that took the initiative to start all manner of businesses and make a great living while doing so. When I discussed this with Denise in the past, she was quick to remind me that I have been self employed most of my life, far more than I was ever employed, and that was all a risk. I know that is true, but most of that is because I would rather work for myself, and by myself, than be exposed to the criticism that I fear might come from employers. Even with that said, I know in my heart through experience that I was always a good worker and I was always appreciated wherever I had been employed, or by clients I served through my various businesses. Yep, it is all about the baggage that I have always carried with me. On the positive side, I have managed well enough, and as I said, I have had a good life.

I regret not buying and having a motorcycle, something like a 1948 Harley Davidson Panhead. Aside from not being able to afford it, I always feared taking the required classes and road test to get a license. Crazy I know, since I got my car driver’s license when I was sixteen and passed on the first try. Testing and I don’t go well together, since I feel like it is an opportunity to be judged by others and that has never sat well with me. Some of you may know that I took some social work university classes at one time. The best thing I remember from those days is that there were no tests, all marks were based on one’s work, and in that regard, I was always on top of it and striving to do my best.

Loaf’s Hog – Created by Don Cheke

One thing I have always liked to do throughout my life is to go for drives. When I was young, I would cruise for hours every evening and as I got older I did so with Denise. I just love the freedom of this act and the peace it brings to me. When I was younger, I cranked up the tunes and sang along while out on my drives. These days, I love a quiet drive with Denise, where we either sit in companiable silence or have great conversations while out on the road. The reason I mention this now, is that I can only imagine what it might have been like to do so on a motorcycle as a young man, or a motorcycle with a sidecar for me and my missus. 👍😊 My brother Dave has a motorcycle, lucky bugger! LOL!

Speaking of motorcycles, one year when Denise, Emma, and I were on a driving holiday we encountered thousands of them as we were nearing Sturgis, South Dakota. We had been in Arizona visiting Denise’s aunt and were taking a longer touring route home. As we neared Sturgis, we began to encounter motorcycles and riders of all kinds, hordes of them. We had no idea at first what was happening but came to realize that the annual Sturgis motorcycle event was just beginning. We were a bit apprehensive seeing all these “bikers,” but became less anxious when we saw one group of them at a roadside rest area sharing photos of grandchildren with each other. We realized that many of the bikers were just regular people, probably dentists and businessmen having their own kind of touring holiday.

I regret not having learned more about money, specifically how to make more of it and manage it better, so that I could have retired with some kind of financial security. I don’t blame my upbringing on this, since Mom had little in the way of money, and she sure didn’t come from a family that provided any education in this area. In fact, she lived in what I would call near poverty, that is, having barely enough to survive on, certainly not enough to thrive on. Dad’s family too, was as poor as anyone and he learned nothing from them with regards to financial planning. When Dad left us, he refused to pay any kind of financial support, so Mom was left to her own devices to provide for her sons. She did her best, but was never rolling in money, as that saying goes. Denise too, came from a background of poverty, far worse than my family ever saw. Somehow, my brothers and I never knew hunger, and Mom always celebrated our special days with good food and presents, while Denise knew hunger very well, She can tell you forty ways to make macaroni and fried bologna, with the bologna being the occasional treat. I get choked up when I think about Denise having to pick bottles in the ditch to help pay for food and gas and other things, on the rare occasions when they could afford them at all. As for celebrations, and the like, if she was fortunate enough to receive a gift, it might be short lived for it could be snapped back the next day and returned for the cash valve so that her parents could use that money for other things, which might include cigarettes and alcohol.

Both Denise and I carry baggage about money, but we have still managed quite well as a couple in the sense that we have always worked, have always had a roof over our heads, and we have not known hunger at all. Yes, there were times in our early marriage that we were low on cash due to choices and circumstance but we still managed to celebrate birthdays and other special occasions. We were always able to have summer holidays, mostly camping trips in a tent, but holidays, nonetheless. We were able to plan and take a “major” holiday at least once every ten years, such as our driving and camping trip to Arizona and our driving trip to British Columbia where we stayed in hotels and motels along the way to and from.

Denise was fortunate to have had a great career as a teacher and was able to retire with a pension. Her pension has meant that we have been able to retire with some security, even though it does not seem to be enough to enjoy many extras, and certainly no extraneous travel that we see so many of our friends able to do. Then there is me. I have never been a big earner. I did alright for the last few years before I retired but there never seemed to be enough to establish any kind of retirement fund for me. As such, when I retired, it was with no income, other than what CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) I was allotted, which I started to take at age 60, and what OAS (Old Age Security) I will get at age 65. To be honest, I often feel like a failure when it comes to how I landed financially, and how I rely on Denise to “support” me. Denise always assures me that I was successful in all the ways that matter and that we have always been a team and made the choices we made together. Sure, she regrets that we didn’t plan better for the future but those regrets are fleeting, because we have landed well enough, and we continue to have a wonderful life together. Although I am not one to buy lotteries tickets, Denise buys one a week, just in case the gods smile down on us and we win big. I doubt that will happen, but you can always dream. 😊

Bags of Moola – Created by Don Cheke

In the end, I know that money is not a panacea for everything, but no one can tell me that it wouldn’t go a long way to eliminating some problems or fixing others.

To wrap up, I will mention two regrets that I think would have been relieved by doing something specific.

Although I have never been one who had a burning desire for travel, certainly not as much as Denise, I do regret that Denise and I did not travel more, or at least farther away from home. I think it would have been good to travel to Europe, Australia, and maybe even the safe parts of South America to experience the greater world around me. I think this would have been educational and allowed me to see a better cross-section of people.

In a similar vein, I regret not having had a more diverse set of friends, peers and/or coworkers, so the current influx of foreign immigrants feels more natural to me. Although I don’t see myself as racist, I do feel that my world, the very small world around me, is somehow being eroded and that I, as an old white guy, am becoming the minority. I don’t mean this in any negative way, but just that it feels a bit scary, that somehow, I am losing the world I have always held dear. Perhaps the change is good, as it forces me to reformat my thinking and adapt to the new reality. Since I am typically a fairly healthy guy, mentally speaking, I know that I will adapt, even if it feels uncomfortable at present.

When you think about regrets, what comes to mind? Let me know in the comments if you wish to share.

Donald B. Cheke – September 9, 2024