Living life true to yourself

Do any of us live life being true to ourselves? I have two questions I ask myself to test that when I struggle to make big decisions. What would 20-year-old Caveman say? And, will I regret it on my deathbed? Now I’m firmly middle-aged I seek wisdom from myself from the bookends of my life.

Those questions have served me well, the Spring and Winter of my life smiled approval to my marriage, having children, changing jobs, moving house. When I was younger I gave more weight to 20-year-old me but, as the years have passed, my thoughts have turned more to my end.

Regrets on your deathbed

The question about regrets on my deathbed became piquant since I read a list in 2012.  It was complied by an Australian palliative nurse, Bronnie Ware.

Having helped many people through their last days she heard them express their regrets.  It moved her to write down the top five most common regrets:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier

When I read that list each one punched me in the gut. They expose some of my deepest fears. These fears underpin why I want to become Financially Independent. I can see a version of the world where I am one of those people, gasping on my deathbed and expressing these regrets.

Different items on that list will hit people in different ways but all of those resonate with me.

This is the first in a series where I ask myself how I’m going to avoid dying with regrets.  I’m going to start with how I’m going to live a life true to myself, rather than the life others expected of me.

Moments that define you.

It was time for the chat with my parents. No, not THAT one. The one about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I was 16 and it was the Easter holidays during my Lower Sixth. In about six months’ I would be applying for university so it was time to make some choices.

The thought of not going to university had not crossed my mind. That was the natural next step in my life. Even though I was at a state school, except for a couple of people everyone I knew at school was planning to go to university. The only questions were what course and what university.

I knew what I wanted to do. From an early age I had been a bookworm.  It wasn’t unusual for me to get through a book every day or two. I would go to the library pretty much every week, in fact I would often go there to do my homework. It wouldn’t be unusual for me to be there three of four times a week, treating myself to a few minutes of a novel between finishing one subject and starting the next. All too often that ‘few minutes’ would become half an hour.  No regrets.

What I wanted to do was easy. I wanted to study English Literature.

It was also what I was never going to suggest to my parents.

Compromising on my truth

My father has fought for everything in his life. He epitomises pragmatism. Very little time for fools. Studying English Literature was the height of foolishness. It was why I hadn’t even suggested that I take English for my A levels. He would had seen it as frippery. To him, hard edged subjects like sciences were all that mattered. So, as a compromise I had tentatively suggested that I take history as a fourth A Level in addition to a mix of maths and sciences. To my utter surprise he had agreed.

Foolishly emboldened by this unexpected victory from a year earlier I had decided to study PPE [Politics, Philosophy, and Economics].  It wasn’t the English that I loved, but I found it more interesting than hard numbers, and maybe the economics bit would be enough to swing it.

So, I girded my loins and walked into the living room.  He was sitting in his brown armchair reading The Daily Telegraph and smoking a Hamlet cigar.

As I entered he folded his paper, exhaled a lungful of smoke and dove straight in. “So what are you going to do at university?”

I took a deep breath. “Well I’m thinking that I would apply for PPE.”

Silence.

I held my breath.

Then he spoke.

“If you want to do that you can get a job and study in your spare time. I’m not going to pay a penny for that.”

“But my student loans won’t cover my costs.”

“So? It’s not a real degree.”

“But I would apply to Oxford.”

“I don’t care. That’s the sort of thing that politicians study. It’s for hobbyists. It’s not for people who work.”

“But…”

“Do what you like. Just don’t expect me to pay.”

And then he walked out.

Living the life others expected of me

I would love to say that I walked out too. That I somehow found the money, studied what I wanted and lived true to myself. That’s not the real world though. We compromised by my doing precisely what I was told. I applied to do the subject that my father told me to study at the university that that he told me to go to. And I got in. I’m good like that. That meant he could boast of me to friends and family.  So, that’s OK.

Something broke in me that day. The last scales fell in from my eyes. I was on the verge of being an adult and my father had exerted his power over me. Not physical power. Economic power. And it felt no less brutal for that.

Looking back the thing that hurt me the most was that he wasn’t interested in listening to why I wanted to study it. He knew the life that he wanted me to live. The life that I wanted to live was irrelevant.

What actually broke in me that day was my self-respect. Even before being knocked back I’d already not been true to myself.  I wanted to study English. But I had swallowed that down so hard that I didn’t even voice it.  As a result, when I was rebuffed it was a double blow. I had swallowed my pride to try to secure a compromise and I had failed.  I had lost both the course I wanted and my respect for myself.

The saddest part of that is that I think that day cracked my relationship with my father. We get on fine now, but I have never since trusted that he would always have my back.

Living a life true to myself

Don’t misunderstand me. I had a fantastic time at university. The experience changed my life. I can’t bring myself to regret it – heck that’s where I met my wife and some of my best friends. But I wasn’t true to myself. I lived the life my father expected.

Unsurprisingly I didn’t do very well in my degree. I passed, but only just. My heart wasn’t in it. I spent three years studying out of duty rather than passion. It showed.

The years and decades passed by. Jobs, marriage, homes, children. For my contemporaries university faded into memory, tales burnished into benign lies by the retelling. To a large extent this was true for me as well but there were quiet moments when I thought about what might have been.  What if I had studied English?

15 or so years later I made the choice to do something about it. To be true to myself. With young kids and a busy job I decided to start a part time degree in English Literature.  Yes, English.  No compromising on PPE, I was finally going to study what I wanted.

So I disappeared into a world of Shakespeare, and Bronte, and Dickens, and Austen, and Flaubert, and Langston Hughes and many others.   As I read I was transported to Harlem, and Africa, and Denmark and France and even to London.

It was incredible but tough. I hadn’t studied English since I was 15 – I didn’t even have an A Level in English. But I didn’t care, it just meant I had to work harder.

Living without regret

It took six years to finally complete that degree. Six years. That’s a big chunk of my life. Six years spent juggling studying with work and family and social life. I would read on my commute and in the evenings and in my lunch hour. In the early hours of the morning the day an essay was due you would find me tapping at my keyboard. I didn’t care if I would be half asleep at work the next day. This was more important.

The only prize at the other end was personal satisfaction. This wasn’t about a change in career or for professional development.  I was finally living my true life and it was everything that I had hoped it would be.

The day that I found out that I had got a first was extraordinary. The email that came through was a valediction that I had been right to love English all those years ago.  It was worth the sacrifices.

More critical than the certificate was how I had changed as a person. I learned how to read and how to write. I learned about love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, life and death. Most important of all I learned what it means to live true to myself.

Living life true to myself and Financial Independence

I’ve written in the past that I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life. That’s true, partly as I’ve deliberately chosen to get rid of the regrets. I learned my lesson as that 16-year-old.  More importantly it’s a lesson that I have to continually tell myself . My instinct is always to be to be the one that compromises. Often that’s fine, but there are times when it’s not.

I’m on the journey to Financial independence in part to allow myself to live true to myself. Having an emergency fund means that can live my values and not compromise at work. Financial freedom will mean that I can try to be the husband and father that I want to be rather than the one that compromises because I have to go work. Financial Independence will mean that I can pursue those activities that spark a flame inside of me rather than those things that I have to do to pay the bills.

It has been a few years since I finished that part time English degree and it is one of things that I look back at with the most pride.  That degree restored the self-respect that I lost when I compromised. I don’t know if it’s coincidence, correlation or causation, but I started this blog shortly after finishing that degree.  That was the point I became more intentional about becoming Financially Independent. Whatever it is I’m not give up living life being truthful to myself. When my end comes I refuse to look back with regret.

Thoughts?

Do you live your life true to yourself?  If not, what’s holding you back