What is the one thing that you wished you would've done in your life?

[Victor_c3]

19. I've actually done just about everything that I would have liked to have done

Other than stuff like what was alluded to in reply number 1, I've done a lot of things in my (short) life so far. I mostly would have like to not have done certain things when I was younger.

I can't really think of anything that I haven't done that I wish I would have done when I was younger. I did some crazy stuff when I was in the Army so I have all of the sense of adventure wrung out of me during those years. I grew up music geek and I'm really good at playing the piano for someone who has never pursued it professionally (I might not play it the best and a true music snob would cringe at my playing, but I can play almost anything that I want with the exception of some of the crazy Chopin etudes and such). I lived in Germany and traveled Europe extensively for four years.

The only thing that I'd love to do in the future is spend some time in the developing world doing aide work. I've love to spend a year or two in a shit hole busting my ass to bring water to a town or work in an orphanage for abandoned girls or something like that in India or Africa somewhere. I like physical labor and I like helping people.

I have a fantasy in my head where I take my daughters when they are high school aged/college aged and spend some time working an aid project in the third world with them. It is very educational to get to know people and see how they live in the developing world. My experiences were in Iraq, but you quickly realize that most people are good people and that there really isn't that much of a difference between you. We all laugh at the same sorts of jokes and we all want the same basic thing - security and a decent chance for our kids to have a better lives than we did.

I would really like to go back to Iraq one day and follow my old patrol routes, but I might have to wait a decade or three before it is safe enough to do that again. Maybe I'll be up to bringing some of my family members with me. There is a lot of the war that I never told them about and, as much as I'm scared of telling them about it, I want them to know about it. I would also love to meet the families of the people that I impacted for better or worse when I was in Iraq. I feel like I owe it to them to stand before them and to let them ask me the tough questions or to show me the pain I caused them in their lives. Such a meeting would be rough, but I suspect that it would offer everyone a sense of closure and maybe make it easier for them to move on.

I'm only 33 years old. I have plenty of time to do a lot with my life in front of me.