David McElroy

What if you finally realize what you should have done years ago? Is it too late to change things?

I get a lot of email — quite a bit of it asking for advice — but this one seemed especially urgent. Lori read what I wrote last night about how we measure success. She said she couldn’t stop thinking about the last lines of that piece, in which I said, “But most people learn [about their misplaced values] too late to make any difference. I hope it’s not too late for me. And I hope it’s not too late for you.”

Lori is 42 years old — and she’s afraid it’s too late for her.

I’m sharing some of her words — lightly edited with her permission to protect her identity — because I have a feeling a lot of people are in the same position.

“I got married when I was 28, but it was pretty clear soon after that I made a serious mistake,” she wrote. “I wasn’t mature enough to know how shallow he was. I guess I was shallow at the time, too, but I kept growing and he didn’t, so I outgrew him. I chose my husband over another man (and I’m embarrassed about the reasons now) and I’ve been unhappy with my overgrown juvenile husband for years.”

She told me a lot more details and then ended with her real fear.

“I understand all you’re saying, but what if I’ve waited too late?”

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A friend called me Monday evening to give me some news about someone I used to know. A woman I knew in high school has been diagnosed with cancer. It’s Stage 4 brain cancer.

I haven’t seen the woman since high school, but her husband — who I knew casually back then — is a banker who I deal with from time to time. I knew his wife very well back then, mostly from long trips on a church bus.

A couple of weeks ago, she suddenly felt strange and passed out. She was quickly diagnosed and had surgery, but what I read about Stage 4 brain cancer doesn’t sound promising.

I can’t help thinking how much it must change your view of the world when you find out that your life is suddenly threatened in a serious way. And how does it change you when this happens to your wife? Or your husband? Or whoever you love most?

Wouldn’t it completely change the meaning of your life? The things that seemed so important before would become meaningless — and the most mundane routines of love would become priceless.

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I’ve discovered my “ideal girl” about half a dozen times so far — and each experience has changed me.

In the second grade, there was Lisa Lane. By the fifth grade, Wendy Ford was the new standard. In the eighth grade, I met Gail James. Nothing immediately came of that, but by the time we were freshmen in college, we finally dated. For the next three years. I almost married her.

As an adult, there have been three other women, each one more perfect — in some way I couldn’t explain — than the previous one. Not a single one of the women has actually been perfect, of course, but I was changed in powerful ways by having loved each of them.

What I’ve slowly learned is that being in love brings out something like a superpower in me. I’m a different person when I’m in love. I can achieve more. I’m a better human being. I become a finer version of myself.

I’m coming to understand that this person is who I need to be all the time. Russian novelist Anton Chekhov understood this more than most.

“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state,” Chekhov wrote. “Being in love shows a person who he should be.”


Being in love has shown me who I need to be. It has shown me the best that I can become.

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