I’d certainly try to take better care of my teeth, but having disintegrating bones has caused most of my dental issues and my back issues and my leg issues.
I’d have done whatever I could to better the chances that I’d have a career in music. Music lessons, never smoke, perfect the piano or guitar.
I’d take more risks, travel more, learn to dance.
I’d never marry, but I would never want to do anything to undo the birth of my daughter, so it looks like I’ve got a problem there.
I’d try to make a better plan for retirement, but to be fair, I thought I was doing that this time and it just went sideways.
Probably join the military when I wanted instead of letting my parents talk me out of it. Get more tattoos, try a different school, just push the envelope. And work out a lot more. Also wouldn’t go into special education. I like it, but it’s not my dream job and I feel I’m “settling” for it.
Learn a second language (probably French) from an early age
Enlist in either the Navy or the Army for several years after graduating high school, for the life experience
Study computer science as my undergrad major, and actually focusing on it seriously, instead of taking basic sciences and wasting away most of my time playing video games
Be much more distrustful and contemptuous of others during my childhood
There are a couple of places where I would change some minor things so I didn’t act like an idiot. There are some things where I took a risk and got away with it, and wouldn’t want to try that again. But mostly I did okay, one wife, great kids, enough money at 72 (almost) so I wouldn’t really want to change much.
I’m at 48, and I wouldn’t change much of anything. There’s a few ways I acted towards a few people that I wish I could do over, but, otherwise, everything has been reasonably hunky-dory. I could probably end up a lot richer if I had pursued medicine or computer science, but I am more than happy with my lot and with the free time it gives me (which is a lot of free time.)
Can I buy every comic I can get my hands on in the 60’s and 70’s, including older-than-that used ones, and then sell most of them and buy Berkshire Hathaway in the 80’s at about 20-something a share? Or does that break the rules?
There’s somebody I knew in college who, in retrospect, was trying quite hard to make a pass at me in a manner that I didn’t recognize at the time. I’d take him up on it. I don’t know whether it would have worked out; but it would be nice to find out, and probably quite a good time for a while even if it didn’t.
In the other direction, there’s a couple of people who I wouldn’t bother spending any time with.
And I’d manage to dig up some equivalent of farm internships soon after I got out of college and do several on different farms, though a system for doing so didn’t exist yet at the time.
I’ve made plenty of poor choices in my life, but if I had to relive it I’d probably just make different poor choices (considering that I’m still making poor choices even today).
Does relive your life mean try to achieve the same outcomes (spouse, kids, occupation) but less stupidly, more successfully?
Or do you mean magically transplant the wisdom (but not specific memories) of now-old me into e.g. 12yo me back in 1970 and run a whole new life from there but with the same underlying 12yo personality, parents, residence, SES, etc., to start from. Or the same but with all my (necessarily vague) memories of how the 70s, 90s, etc., turned out, but as the OP said, without being able to prefigure sporting events, good investments, etc.?
Or even magically rewind me to age e.g. 12 here in 2023 with a full set of wisdom and memories of 1960-2023 but suddenly I’ve got parents and siblings and attend school around here while none of them are surprised to see me in their lives even though I’m sure surprised to be in this new skin & life?
Very different thing to begin with old wisdom in a new-to-you future versus old wisdom in a variation of your old actual past.
As to me, I’ve had a pretty good run. I did some cringeworthy shit as a teen through 25yo that stunted a bunch of my potential. But I still came out pretty good. I bet if we magically reran my life experiment with no special wisdom 10 times, this real one is probably the best or 2nd best outcome of the set. Bitch about it though I sometimes do.
I suppose the biggest thing old wisdom could give young me (or anyone) is a sense of what’s important and what isn’t. Know when to hold em and when to fold em. Know what to actually worry about / take action on and what to ignore.
It’s easy to say “work more diligently” and “have more fun”. It’s hard(er) to know which of those two things to do when and in what way. Having sex every day in high school sounds like fun until you realize you might have a dozen kids by the time you graduated.
I’d get all the pedantry out of my system the second time around (can’t pass up the opportunity of being a know-it-all when you do know it all on a rerun), but then chill out and be much less pedantic the third time around.
The only big change is I would skip college - I went 3 years and quit, and I’d rather just start working full-time sooner so I could start investing sooner.
The big question is in a second life, would I still have had an abusive childhood?
If so, then, no thank you.
It it meant that I was starting new without that, then it would be tempting, except what others have said about my children. Any changes in my life and they wouldn’t be here.
I wouldn’t change a thing. My life isn’t perfect. My physical health could have probably benefitted from some better choices; my finances might have been better earlier in my life if I’d made some different decisions; there are any number of stupid things I have done that I regret whenever they come to mind.
But changing something might mean a completely different path that resulted in not having the family I have, and ending up as the me I am today. I’ll stick with what I know.
If the offer is to live a brand new life after this one, endowed with some of the experience from this one, I’ll take that.
I would have sung in a junior high and high school choir. That way I wouldn’t have had to learn to sight read and match pitch in my thirties, and would have had some different nerds to hang with.
Yeah, teeth. That one. Although it isn’t clear to me it would have helped.
I wouldn’t try so hard to be Something and focus more on being someone. I mean, someone easier to be around.
I think it depends on how and when you get back to your second chance, and what you retain?
At what age do you restart? Do you have complete memories of your first life, or perhaps just skills you have acquired?
The OP has specified that the outcome of specific events may be quite different, so no buying Microsoft stock on the ground floor*. But are the overall trends the same?
In that case, as Mr Mustard suggested, I would certainly have started buying index funds earlier!
I spent most of my working career as a software engineer. But I could have gone in other directions: might have been a music producer/engineer or a professor of chemistry at a university if some rather accidental things had happened differently. I have a lot of interests, but I am not driven by any one.
I rather envy artists who just KNOW what they have to do… though that doesn’t always lead to a happy life, it seems.
As for love life: I have one particular fiasco where I blew it because I was so ignorant of female sexual physiology… but I’m not going to get into details of that here.
*(IBM creates a PC based on the 68000 running UNIX)
But you (any you) have no idea how much better, or how many more, great kids your other life would have created. I can certainly understand the value of quitting while you’re ahead, and in fact my post upthread echoed that exact idea for myself.
I just find it a little odd that so many parents are convinced the kids they have are the optimal set they ever could have. It’s kinda like Lake Woebegone, where all the kids are way above average. In whichever measures of merit; be that smarts, potential, or just sheer lovableness.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. “Optimal” isn’t a useful concept, with love, which sees the best and forgives the rest.
