Why do we put off changes that might give meaning to our lives?

By David McElroy · May 15, 2021

I had another birthday last week. They seem to show up more quickly every year now. When I look in the mirror, I still see a 30-year-old man — but I wonder what others see.

For at least 10 years now — maybe 20 — I’ve had a list of things I need to change to make my life what I want it to be. I’ve made a lot of excuses about why I haven’t made those changes. Some of the excuses are pretty decent — even reasonable — but others are just self-indulgent whining.

I’m not yet where I want to be. I’m not yet who I want to be. And there’s a part of me which keeps telling me the lie that I still have forever to make those changes.

As I drove home from dinner Saturday night, I was almost hit by a speeding car which was running from a police car that was right behind it. I was on a four-lane highway which has a turn lane in the middle. I was stopped in the turn lane and was moments from darting to the left through an opening in traffic.

As I was about to accelerate into my left turn, I saw blue lights in my rear-view mirror — and then I realized the police car was chasing someone who was speeding directly toward me. I realized in horror that there was no way either of the cars could possibly stop.

They were about to hit me — and I thought I was about to die.

The driver who was fleeing from police swung into the lane to my left — barely missing the left side of my car and barely missing a head-on collision with a car in the oncoming lane. The police car came flying by at the same insane speeds.

All the other traffic around me had come to a complete stop. For a long pause, it was silent except for the sirens of two police cars, as another one joined the chase. In that brief silence — which felt longer than it was — I had the strong sense that I had just escaped death.

I pulled off the highway into a parking lot where I’d been headed and I turned off the car. I’ve been in a few accidents in the past — including hitting a deer late at night on a country road — but I felt more scared after this incident than I’ve ever felt after an actual accident. I was surprised at the thoughts that flooded my head.

It wasn’t a rational, coherent narrative. It was a series of fleeting images and disconnected thoughts.

I felt disappointed in myself in that moment, because I suddenly had the irrational thought that I would be horribly disappointed in myself if I’d died right then and hadn’t done more with my life. It wasn’t a regret over not becoming rich and famous as a businessman or empire-builder — things which once would have been my dying regrets — but it was about not having the life I needed.

Those fleeting thoughts were about missing love. Missing connection. Unfulfilled desires to create more and do more. The images were about things missing. I saw a woman’s face. I even had fleeting thoughts of children I’ve never really met. There were places I’d never been. Words I’d never written and images I’d never created.

As the chaotic mixture of thoughts finally subsided, I realized that some of this might have been influenced by a conversation I had had with a friend at dinner.

She and I had been talking about someone we both knew who almost died recently. (It seems as though I’ve had a lot of friends who’ve had brushes with death lately.) As we were lamenting what had happened to our mutual friend, I brought up the fact that we both know he’s unhappy with his life and hasn’t been wiling to fix the problems that make him unhappy.

I told my her that his brush with death should be a wake-up call to him to make changes while he still has the chance.

And as I sat in that parking lot — making the connection between my own situation and what I had said about my friend just minutes before — I realized that I was talking about myself as well. Why don’t we make the changes in our lives that we know we need to make? Why do we allow ourselves to feel so miserable and off-course, but do so little to fix what’s wrong?

I think we wrongly believe we still have plenty of time. I still look at myself and think there’s plenty of time to find the love and connection I need. There’s still plenty of time to have a loving family. There’s still plenty of time to serve the world around me by creating art and teaching the messages I feel called to share.

I think we’re also afraid of failure and the judgment of others. I might not like the life I have, but at least I know how to live that life. Nobody has to look at me sadly and criticize me for chasing “impossible dreams.” I might be unhappy with my life, but it’s a life that those around me can understand. I’m not going to be criticized for it.

The truth is that we don’t have forever. We might not even have tomorrow. All we have is today. And waiting around for some time in the future — when others might approve of the things we might need to do — is a great way to waste our lives.

It frustrates me that I keep learning this lesson and then forgetting it. After the fear of dying today has passed, the fear of others’ judgment returns. The fear of failure returns. The fear of embarrassing myself returns. And I go back to making excuses — the excuses that keep me from making the changes I know I need to make.

My life has been on hold for awhile. I keep realizing that and trying to force myself into action, but I keep finding new excuses — really good ones, no doubt — to keep myself from taking chances.

I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson. I’d like to think I’ll begin tomorrow on making all the changes I’ve been putting off. But if I keep making excuses for myself, I’ll let another birthday pass next year — and the year after that — when I look in the mirror and say, “Hey, I still have plenty of time to change.”

And following that path is exactly what causes most people to go to their graves full of bitter regrets.

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Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

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