Take more chances

The 85 year old version of you will be grateful.

Sep 25, 2024

I found the photo, below, somewhere online. I have no idea where I got it from. It was years ago.

It purports to be a retrospective view of life from an 85 year old woman from Kentucky called Nadine Stair. It has always had a strong effect on me.

I kept it and I read it every now and then.

I couldn’t say if it is real or fake. The photo looks authentic as does the book page. Importantly the content, Nadine Stair’s views on life, rings true in a way most advice does not.

I have added a transcript of her words below for you to consider.

If I had my life to live over
I’d like to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’d have fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I’m one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat, and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.
If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.
-Nadine Stair, 85 years old, Louisville, Kentucky

Picking daisies and having moments

Although brief, Nadine Stair managed to pack quite a bit into her observations about life.

Here are some highlights you may appreciate.

Take more risks, make more mistakes

We play it too safe. Most really live someone else’s life. A life approved by your cautious parents or even some society endorsed role that doesn’t suit you.

Inherent to Nadine Stair’s message is the acceptance that along with the risks come mistakes. But perhaps the real takeaway from age 85 is the ease with which the mistakes can finally be accepted. What may seem unacceptably risky and prone to failure today will be understood as almost irrelevant at the end.

The new career didn’t quite pan out as expected; the girl said no when you asked her out; that cross-country move was a disaster, but was entirely survivable.

No risk, no glory. That’s the deal no matter who you are. Push that boat out, you only get one life.

Control less and let life happen

We are told Nadine Stair would be less concerned with controlling life and more focused on living it. Obviously some aspects of life can be planned, and many things should be. But life also happens beyond that which we control.

At her advanced age Stair seems to be telling us she lived a little too sensibly. Day after day, hour after hour she says. What she suggests is focus less on monitoring life. Actually immerse and live it.

Take it as it comes. Eat the ice cream when it is there and fret less about the beans you’ve been told you ought to eat.

In today’s vernacular ignore the kale salad and have the double bacon cheeseburger with loaded fries at least once in a blue moon. Wash it down with a cold beer or a vodka. It won’t kill you.

As she reminds us when embedded in the real world like this you may invite a few unwanted troubles, but you’ll have fewer imaginary ones.

This seems to be an allusion to the dangers of getting lost inside our heads and the false sense of control it gives us. This can trigger imaginary problems, many of which never come to pass.

So she reminds us we must let life happen and not seek to steer it too much.

Worry less and embrace the silly

Stair talks about embracing silliness. Being less serious. This is quite an important lesson few really learn.

Instead of worry today we talk of anxiety; social anxiety, generalized anxiety, even anxiety disorders. Many live in an anxious state. Psychotherapists tell us of widespread feelings of existential dread with many seeking pharmaceutical solutions to these problems.

Stair’s antidote is probably the most effective, take very little of it seriously. When you are occasionally wrong, and some calamity does emerge, deal with it. Investing in fretting beforehand is one of those all consuming tasks that feels real and even useful. But this is a mirage. Much of what we worry about will never happen. It is an invention we convince ourselves is real.

Deal with things as they happen, if they happen at all, but give nothing in advance to the future.

She uses the term limbering up, understanding well how worry, anxiety and fear seize our mental machinery and clog up our thinking. This is a freezing action that slows us down.

The carefree do seem more loosened up than the rest of us, and it is a learned skill. Like everything we learn it just takes a little practice.

Enjoy yourself more

Related to this is an awareness we should try to enjoy ourselves. She talks about having some moments in her life. If she could live it again she’d have more.

She goes further. She wouldn’t just have more moments she would attempt to have nothing but moments.

What are these moments? Are they highlights? Lucky happenings?

Her comments imply they are not happenstance but engineered in some sense. Maybe she meant things that brought joy and happiness. The birth of a child or an exciting life change.

I suspect what she was alluding to was our tendency to let life happen to us, or to take a passive stance and imagine we have less control than we have.

This seems contrary to her earlier advice, that we should not try to control life too much. That is true for negatives like future anxiety; let it happen and don’t fret so much. But the opposite is true for the good things we enjoy. Don’t just let it happen, make it happen.

At 85 there is a lot of backstory to reflect on. It is probably harder to lie to yourself. All the chances not taken. The cowardice and the avoidance that now seem absurd or even perverse.

At that age you become aware that options are always available in some form. These often come disguised as change and looks like the unknown, a leap of faith.

She is alluding to the road not taken. Its mysteries will haunt those who lack the courage to take the chance because like Nadine Stair you never forget when you took the safe choices.

You can’t be passive. You must be active and make the hard decisions to really live. That way you might screw it up from time to time but you also get the moments that come with it.

And when you get old enough it is then you realize why. That for some lucky devils life is primarily moments.

So as Nadine suggests, go to more dances and ride more merry-go-rounds. Create more moments if you can. Make more of your life about the cultivation of moments.

Live now in the real world, not in your head

The moments are how Nadine Stair characterizes real life. She contrasts this with living years ahead within our own minds while today passes us by.

Many do this. We range forward to an imagined future. It makes us worry and fret. It affects our decisions in the here and now.

What if I make a mistake? What if it all goes wrong? She rhymes off a litany of safety items this kind of worry encourages. A parachute, a raincoat, a hot water bottle.

The implication is none of it was needed. Those not lost in the future travel light. Their lack of baggage make the moments easier to enjoy since they are unencumbered with mental clutter about what they ought to be doing. They are immersed in the present moment and not dazzled by an imagined future.

Stair seems to be discussing mindfulness or presence. To enjoy now while you can because soon it will be gone and you’ll be 85.

Living fully today, not in the future, means rejecting the mental chatter. All the seemingly important stuff Stair once lugged around but tells us, with clarity and precision, you simply don’t need.

We would do well to pay attention. Tomorrow has yet to happen and will come soon enough. Today has plenty to attend to, so get on with it and enjoy it for all it offers.

Leave the angst at home as you venture forth. Travel light so you can embrace it all. Your life has a future but it is made up of a series of nows you must discipline yourself to experience.

A white knuckle reckless mess

Life is what it is. It is essentially a tragedy. But we turn it into a farce when we live in our heads.

Stair reminds us this is a choice. We can choose not to. We can let go of the illusion of control. We can ride the tumultuous wave of life and enjoy what it has to offer, from ice cream to companionship.

That doesn’t mean we should be passive. Life must be actively lived. So this kind of personal control over our immediate circumstances is important to cultivate. This is primarily recognizing we all have some options and we must exercise them to attain happiness.

Many of us don’t live fully inside our lives. We stand outside and observe, trying to calculate the next brilliant move. In this way we can cheat ourselves of truly living. We don’t pick the daisies but we do pack the thermometer and the raincoat. Meanwhile those who live better occasionally get wet and seem none the worse for the lack of panic.

Some of those who make it to 85 have witnessed themselves and others waste a whole life packing raincoats for storms that never come. Worse, they have seen others throw caution to the wind and live less cautiously and lived better as a result. They climb the mountains and swim in the rivers because they understand that is what life is. Don’t find yourself stranded on the river bank or the foothills envying the adventurous. Join in. Do what they do.

In doing so they live more deeply, more impressively. Some among us live better than the norm. They seem to rejoice in life and all it can offer instead of ruminating over its pitfalls and negatives.

The cautious view of life when 85 must then seem absurd.

The hesitations, the barely remembered worries, and the misplaced concerns. To the 85 year old the non-octogenarians have so much life ahead to live and all the energy with which to enjoy it.

The sense of missing out through bad choices, that must be hell. It is the life not lived.

Nadine Stair was at least honest, she got some of it wrong. Everyone does, including you. But assuming you are not yet near the end then why not reconsider your own position in light of what she has to say?

Are you worrying about thermometers and raincoats? More accurately, are you mistakenly predicting storms where none will appear?

Importantly, are you selling yourself short? Even if the rain clouds appear do you really need the raincoat and the wellingtons and the umbrella?

Do you sometimes lose yourself to crazy impulses and pack a wetsuit, a spare wetsuit and a dinghy just in case it’s a deluge? Would an occasional soaking really kill you? Can’t you swim? Want to learn to swim? It isn’t much more than glorified floating.

That’s the secret Nadine Stair probably glimpsed towards the end. The reckless can barely swim themselves, they just don’t care. They’re happy with not drowning.

This seems to be Nadine Stair’s underlying message. Work a bit harder to live your actual life. Drop the worries and the angst. Understand it is fleeting. You won’t regret not packing the thermometer but you will lose out on the daisies and the merry-go-rounds if you aren’t careful. You’ll miss your moments when you should really be working to create more of them.

Forget the regrets and take it as it comes. Plan less, experience more, and accept the sense of risk will enhance it all. Is it really a life at all without the flare of anxiety?

Don’t wait until 85 to embrace your best life. Decide now it is going to be a white knuckle reckless mess because you won’t get a second attempt.

Let go and experience what life can really offer. If that seems too crazy then reread the quote above think of Nadine and her many decades of experience.

If she could have swapped places with you when she was 85 she’d have went out and embraced it all right now. All the things you are hesitating to do, held back only by pictures and words in your head. She would have created nonstop moments if she could.

Whatever is holding you back would not have cut the mustard with Nadine Stair by the time she was 85. So don’t let it hold you back either.