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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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How would your priorities change if you had a chance to relive life?

By David McElroy · July 18, 2012

“I’m really not in a hurry to go home to my wife,” said Jim. “We don’t really understand each other, so I spend most of my time now that I’m retired looking for reasons to get away from home during the day.”

I’d seen Jim before, but we’d never spoken until Tuesday afternoon. You know how older men like to congregate in certain community gathering spots, frequently for breakfast? There are some guys like that who sometimes hang out in the afternoons at a hamburger joint where I often go to write.

Jim normally hangs out with some other older guys who come into this place in the afternoon, but none of his buddies were around. He’s 74 years old, so he’s been retired for years now. I don’t remember how many he said it had been.

Jim is bored. He used to be a partner in a construction supply business that was absorbed by a larger company. He didn’t get rich when the company sold, but he said it was enough for him to retire in style and do whatever he wanted. The only problem is that he had spent his entire life doing things that weren’t especially meaningful — just to arrive at retirement and wonder what he had been doing for all these years.

He’s not sure how he ended up spending his life in the way that he did. He said when he was a teen-ager, he and his brother were both going to be Baptist preachers and they were both planning to serve God and make the world a better place. His brother got married and that couple became missionaries in South America. Jim said he had planned to go to seminary, but he had a business opportunity offered to him right as he was finishing college. It seemed like a great opportunity, so he thought he’d work on the business for a few years and then sell his share, leaving him with some security.

The effort to build a nest egg for security turned into something of a millstone around his neck. He got married and his wife was happy to have him building a business. But building it was slow. It was tedious. As the years went by, he had invested too much time not to keep working at it. Five years. Then a decade. After 15 years, things were far more profitable. He was making a good living. Just a few more years and he would have something to sell — and then he could do something that mattered.

“It seemed like we started on the company one day and then before I knew it, 40 years had passed,” Jim said. “I don’t know where the time went. I was always counting on doing some things that mattered, but the time never was there.”

Jim said he wasn’t as involved with church ministries as he wanted to be, because he always had business to attend to.

“I was a deacon at my church,” he said, “but I think it had more to do with them making sure I was on board for giving the money they knew I could give.”

The wife he thought he knew — who he had once thought might make a fine pastor’s wife in a few years — got quite happy and comfortable being someone with money. She mostly raised their children and spent time with her friends. They lived parallel lives, he said, not disliking each other, but not knowing one another. By this point, he says he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him. He’s not even sure when their priorities diverged so badly.

So he has his money, but he doesn’t have any real intimacy with anybody around him. The friendships he thought he had went away when the business was sold. He’s bored and left wondering what happened to his life.

“If I could do it again, I would do everything different,” he said. “I’d go to seminary and become a preacher. That’s what I felt called to do, but the business made so much sense. Everybody understood why I was doing it. At the end, though, all it did was give me a moderate-size pile of money and the feeling I didn’t do anything worth doing.”

What about Jim’s brother, the missionary?

“He and his wife are real happy,” Jim said. “They still live in South America, so I don’t see them that often. But they’ve worked together for all these years on work that they felt called to do. They feel like they’ve done things that mattered and helped a lot of people and done what God wanted them to do. They have a peace and fulfillment that I don’t have.”

Jim paused. I thought for a moment he might cry.

“I’d gladly trade the money I made and the life I’ve had for what they had,” he said. “They have love for each other and they know their lives mattered. I don’t have that. I wish I could do it all again and make different choices.”

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I haven’t posted anything new in my YouTube series about narcissism in the last couple of weeks, so some people have been asking about it. There’s nothing wrong and I’ll be back soon. The issue is simply a technical problem because of a piece of equipment that died. Here’s a brief video I posted on YouTube to explain.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

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