The one regret

Well if you are a facebook friend you may have seen that I have said I finally have a regret… I have been told by my parents, friends, self help books and other sources to live life without regret as it has made me the person I am today. For the most part I agree with that statement but now as I am getting closer to my mid-30s I am realizing that my body is starting to let me down. This being said I am now regretting not taking care of my body better in my younger days. There I have said it, as much as I have loved the contact sports I have played in my youth I do wish I would have stopped earlier and taken up activities that do not do so much damage to one’s body. My body, with all its aches has given me moments of extreme pain in the last 6 months and a realization that I will struggle for the rest of my life with joint pain and arthritis. I have been fortunate to be living in a hot climate where the pain on my joints has been kept to a minimum but still I have days where I struggle to walk up right. I do blame myself, the extra caloric intake has not helped matters nor the lack of stretching and core work to keep my body strong. I have lured myself to a belief that I will be able to stay strong and healthy with little effort. I guess it one of the life lessons that we learn and our elders, parents and siblings try to teach us, with poor results is that we need to take care of our bodies more than we do. Now I am not going to go granola, hippy or whatever you want to call it but I think that Tim McGraw did say it best when he sang the song “My next 30 years” is that

“Oh my next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers
Maybe I’ll remember my next thirty years

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life
Raise a little family and hang out with my wife (have to find one first…)
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear
Make up for lost time here, in my next thirty years
In my next thirty years”

Lets see where this takes me…