Your entire post is interesting but it's the first sentence that attracts most of my attention. I think au contraire that one can know what he's missed and not regret missing it. To use an extreme example, you can see real footage of men in war and not regret being there in the thick of battle.
But to use a more appropriate example: I have seen people (mostly my four siblings) who had children and saw up close and personal what they underwent by the presence of children: the noise, food messes, pleas for money, fights between siblings, but more importantly, the emotional stress and fights between the husband and wife caused by discipline problems and financial problems.
This simply reinforced my teenage decision to avoid having children.
It also likely saved my life. You see, I am a person who is under stress almost all the time. Built-in defect. An example: when I was in my 20's I was a radio announcer and DJ with some talent. But after just four years this inherent stress I have caused me to literally lose my voice: I developed a form of stuttering, unable to get out the words. End of radio career.
Now if this could happen can you imagine what the stress of having the years-long responsibility of taking care of children, combined with an inherited heart defect (see earlier post), would have done. My wife would have been a widow years ago.
To return to my "thesis", I could also have been a lawyer (qualified for law school and all) but once I made a full investigation and found out what law school really required, I declined. Again, I likely avoided an early death.
It's just an assertion but I think that one can just think about what may have been and not do it, he can feel sure that he has not missed "anything" in the sense that what he missed was not worth it. Anyway, that's the way I see it.
Well here's a point where we agree. As a lawyer myself, I used to work at a firm owned by a local politician where I was one out of two associates. The other associate and I managed 500 files between the two of us. At any given time, we each had 70 cases in litigation. We spent all out time just putting out fires, only working on the cases that were emergencies.
It got to the point where I started looking at the obituaries in the state bar association newsletter. There, I found two different kinds of obits: the ones from lawyers who had long distinguished careers and who died at the age of 92, and the ones who were in big downtown firms, working long hours, who died at the age of 43.
It was soon after then that I went on my own.
We have to do what works best for us. I had 4 sisters and came from a broken home. The fighting, the messes. No thanks. God had another plan for me though. Funny, the messes and stuff just aren't as messy when they are yours. My husband was fussing at me the other day. Now that mine are grown and I can spoil and then send the grandbabies home I have noticed that I'm not as patient as I used to be. I would take mine out to eat and one would usually get cranky. I hated the frowns from the "singles and couples" I would get. I mean , they were just little kids. Now, when we go out to eat, I have noticed that I like it quiet and like to sit away from kids. I was thinking oh my gosh, "I'm acting like that" now. I put that to bed the other day though. I took my two grandson's to a cafeteria. They wanted to be "helpful" and the baby had his own ideas where he wanted to go. Anyway, they (people my age) were frowning at me again:') What was their problem. These weren't just kids but "special kids":') My little blessings. Go figure.
Your post proves her point. You don't get what war is like from watching footage.