Father: "It was a life without regrets"
"Living a life without regrets"
Well, it's a phrase you hear often, isn't it?
Do your best so you have no regrets.
It's a phrase often heard as a way to encourage someone, but doing your best is... well, you know.
It's such a common phrase, but it's very difficult to actually achieve.
"Living a life without regrets"
I'm going to write about that.
The reason is, today I took my father to his favorite udon shop, and while we were slurping our noodles, I asked him.
Me: "It's been eight years since you retired from work, how's it going?"
Father: "Hmm, has it really been that long?"
"How's it going? Well, I guess I'm just lounging around."
Me: "Well, even if you say you're lounging, you do the pruning, pull weeds, and put concrete in the gaps between the bricks, so it's not like you have nothing to do." (My father is a former carpenter)
Father: "That's true, I also do the cleaning and waxing."
Me: "Thinking about it that way, you should thank the grass for growing so you have something to pull."
Father: "Ah, maybe so lol"
"But, it really was a life without regrets. I did what I had to do, after all.""
A conversation between a 78-year-old and a 54-year-old man. Rather than a lively conversation, it felt more like we were talking in low voices.
When a 78-year-old says, "It was a life without regrets", it carries a different kind of weight.
After that, there was a lot of time with almost no conversation.
It's a bit embarrassing, but eating udon with my father like that made me feel proud, happy, and respectful.
I don't know why, but I felt happy and took a photo of my father's profile as he slurped his udon, and also took a selfie of the two of us. (It was kind of embarrassing (*ﾉωﾉ))
We continued the conversation in the car on the way home.
Father: "I was desperate to get work, showing my rural dialect openly so I wouldn't lose to those around me."
Me: "I see, so it wasn't just about leaving results, but that you gave it your all."
Father: "I wonder."
I simply thought it was amazing.
When I reach that age, will I be able to call my own life a "life without regrets"?
Being able to say those words means that you can think to yourself that you gave it your all in that very moment, right?
Even if it's impossible to give your all in every single aspect of life,
"I did what I could when it was time to do it"
"I grabbed my own life with my own hands"
"Even regarding failures, they were failures I could accept"
I feel that things like that are probably what "without regrets" means.
I am also reaching the age where I am starting to think about life after 60.
Am I living in a way that, if I were to look back at this very moment, I could say I have lived a life without regrets?
And my old man also said this:
"I don't even feel like meeting up with friends anymore."That's what he said.
For some reason, I didn't feel like this meant he was lonely.
If anything, it felt like he had lived his life to the fullest, so from now on, he's content with tending to his plants and the weeds that grow... and that's fine.
And since he says he has no free time, there's no doubt about it.
Honestly, as a "father" to me, he wasn't a father I could give a very high score to.
But perhaps it's cool to think of that as the life of a man who walked his own path, including all of that.
Is it a good life to be called a good person by your wife?
Is it a good life to be called a good person by your children?
Is it a good life to be called a good person by the people around you?
I don't know, but I thought that being able to say, like my old man, that you yourself have lived a life without regrets is undoubtedly a good life.
To be thinking about things like this, I must have gotten old too.
But I don't dislike the version of myself that can realize these things.
This is something I can see precisely because of who I am now.
I am really glad I was able to write these thoughts down on note.
If I am able to read this text when I reach the same age as my old man, I am very much looking forward to seeing how I will feel.