A Lucky Guy!

I am a lucky guy.

No, really… I am! 

Sometimes it is beneficial to take a few minutes to look back at your life and think about what you have learned. I’ve learned a lot – I mean, really, A LOT! I’m still in the process, and I’ll always feel that I haven’t learned nearly as much as I should have. But I have come to realize a lot of things, and one of these is that I have been very, very lucky in my life.

Of course, we can always look at our lives and focus on what has gone wrong, where we fell short, situations that didn’t go as we had hoped, ways in which we felt shortchanged, etc. But for most of us, this amounts to just some silly, selfish, “poor me” tantrums with no real basis in fact. It just fulfills the need so many of us have to complain about things and look elsewhere for the blame.

Maybe your situation is different and you really do have some valid reasons to complain or to say that life sucks. But I don’t. When I really look at it, the only possible verdict is that my life has been pretty good except in those areas where I let myself down. I’ve been very lucky that my experience of life has been mostly good, and when there have been problems, they’ve usually been self-inflicted. If I am honest about it, I can only cite a few instances where someone else, or life in general, really screwed me over.

To start off, I was incredibly lucky to have been born where and when I was. Considering a lot of the alternatives, those of us born in America and Canada are pretty lucky people. We were born in a place where – until recently – there was very little standing in your way toward success. If you have the talent, skill, desire and willingness to work hard, you can accomplish almost anything. In America and Canada, even a person from the poorest and humblest levels of society can rise up to the top. 

Now the government is increasingly trying to get in the way and control who can rise and how far you can go, but we do still have a system that gives us the power to fight back against that kind of government control. So there is always hope that balance can be restored and liberty kept alive.

But being born an American gave me great opportunities that, unfortunately, don’t exist for everyone. I got a good education at a time when public schools still excelled, and I was able to put myself through a great university before costs became prohibitive. As an American, I can travel pretty easily to just about anyplace I want in the world. This is not the same for many of my friends in other countries who have to deal with strict visa limitations, control by their own governments, higher travel costs, etc.

I was very lucky to have been born in a period of relative peace and prosperity.  When I was a kid, middle-class Americans were able to afford homes, cars and other things that made life safer and more comfortable. I definitely had it better than my parents and a LOT better than my grandparents.

When I was a kid, we had a lot of new technology that made our lives better than it had been for earlier generations. I was lucky to have been born at that point in time when we had such technology, but before the swell of technology virtually took over kids’ lives. We still played outdoors almost all the time, instead of sitting like lumps in front of a computer or video game. Technology is a wonderful thing, but sometimes we are a lot more free without it: free to be kids, free to be natural, free to be human.

We felt safe and didn’t worry about perverted child molesters and such. We could walk alone to and from school, ride our bikes all over town, play outside at night, and we felt safe. 

North America was not a place ravaged by war, or drought, or disease. In my childhood, we didn’t fear for our homes or our lives. As a kid, we did have some fear that the Soviet Union wanted to drop nuclear bombs on us, but we didn’t dwell on that. Really, we didn’t think much about it at all. 

I was too young for Vietnam and by the time the first Iraq war came along, I was past the prime for active military service. I did join the Navy during the later stages of the Cold War, and sometimes things were not really so cold, but I was lucky a few more times, and I’m here now.

So I was pretty lucky.

I had issues with my parents, but, really, I was pretty lucky to have been born to the parents I had. They were solid, steady people who worked hard and did the best they could for their family. They didn’t drink, do drugs, waste money on frivolous things, or anything like that. My father believed in saving for something before buying it, and not just running up credit bills. Sometimes that meant that neighbors had nicer cars or TVs than we did, but we were better off for his common-sense approach.

From my parents, I learned some good basic values. In my youth, I sometimes went against those values, as we all do, but at least I HAD those values to fall back on when it mattered.

Often we learn more from the hard times, especially our own mistakes, than from anything else.  In this, I’ve also been lucky. I have had some hard times, but they’ve been mostly of my own making. And I’ve had the good fortune to have learned some valuable lessons. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes hurt others. Those times I've hurt others is the only thing in my life that I truly regret... and I regret that a lot! But as I realized the pain of others and felt my own suffering, I also learned and came to understand life better. It’s what I’ve been on this Earth to do, and I’ve been lucky to have the lessons.

Life has given me the opportunity to travel to so many different countries and to experience so much of the world.  I’ve seen almost every part of the U.S. and much of Canada. I’ve swum in the South China Sea; sailed on the tropical Pacific, run into a shark while snorkeling over a reef at the edge of the Marianas Trench, climbed to the top of Mount Fuji (twice), and rode a motorcycle around the island of Hokkaido. 

I’ve hiked on the steppe of Kazakhstan, the windswept expanses of southern Patagonia, the gentle pastures of southwestern Ireland, and the high valleys of the Peruvian Andes. I’ve tasted wonderful cuisine in cities like Tokyo, Sapporo, Lima, Cusco, Cajamarca, Buenos Aires, Comodoro Rivadavia, Santiago, Almaty, Dublin, Galway, Honolulu, Vancouver, Montreal, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Kyiv and Kharkiv, and countless towns and villages on four continents.

More than just visiting so many places, I’ve had the opportunity to live in a variety of places around the world. I’ve lived in a number of places in the U.S., including New England (where I grew up), New Jersey, Maryland, coastal California (Monterey), West Texas, just outside of Chicago, and of course beautiful Colorado, which is still and probably always will be my home. Outside of the U.S., I’ve lived on the island of Guam, in two different regions of Japan, in Lima, Peru, and now in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

I’m really a lucky guy.

I’ve been lucky to have two incredible daughters who have grown to be amazing individuals in their own rights. When I see what they are doing and accomplishing in their own lives, I am immensely proud of who they have become. They are better than me, and this is how it should be.

I’ve been lucky to have had many fantastic friends throughout my life, especially in recent years. Some of the best have been in my life for 20 years or more, and they are still there for me. I have many, many acquaintances here in Kharkiv – wonderful people, all. And I have a core of special friends here in Kharkiv who really are among the best a person could have.

Lucky!

I have known love, really known love at a deep, soul level. I don’t think most people really find that. But I have.  It was brief and didn’t stay, didn’t persevere, and it’s still hard to know why.  But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had it, so I know what it is, how it feels, what it means. I am lucky to have had that experience, that knowledge. And since I am a lucky guy, it certainly can happen again.

I know that I am lucky in many other ways too. So perhaps there will be a “part two” to this post.

Perhaps in some small way this will get you to thinking about your own life. You are probably pretty lucky too. Don’t you agree?

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