Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?
If I could do so as the me I am now, I’d do any of them (post-High School,) but if I’d be the me I was at the time, then I don’t see the point. Either way, there would be changes that would ripple through the rest of my life, to varying degrees. I got through largely without unnecessary tragedy, I’d as likely screw it up as improve upon it.
If nothing downstream could be changed, that would be like watching a boring documentary that had none of the tedious parts cut out. Like watching the 17 days a wildlife photographer sat freezing his ass off uneventfully before he got footage of a snow leopard. I really don’t see the point of that.
Life is beautiful because one has no idea what it might bring.
Not one thin dime. I have no pressing need to go to a place without breathable quantities of oxygen for longer than I can hold my breath. If complex technology is required every millisecond to stay alive… well, I know where I’m not wanted.
I’ll leave it to the billionaires who have enough spare change lying around to fund personal space programs.
For Global Thermonuclear War: Find a nice place near a likely ground zero for instantaneous demolecularization — so as to avoid slow death by radiation sickness & nuclear winter starvation.
For Climate Change: carry a Nomex suit, a rubber raft, and an umbrella.
For aliens: assume Roddenberry was right until proven otherwise. (If Hawking was right, we’re screwed anyway.)
I ran into a seeker from far lands,
and asked him what he sought in my hometown.
He said he sought what's true and beautiful.
I asked him if it was here, more than his home?
"Sometimes you have to walk a thousand miles
to find that which resides beneath your nose.
To unlock truth, the tumblers must align
from the shake of experience and time."
Uh, we are all seeking both. That is the fundamental strain of being human — the struggle between a need for novelty and a need for familiarity. We are all both tribesman and traveler — though in varied proportion. I love the traveler more in my own particular self.
As far as life experiences, I find just about everything gets better with age. It’s probably to do with the dawning realization that most of the shit one has gotten worked up about over the years wasn’t worth it (as well as the realization that one has fewer years ahead than behind and so one had better get on with it in an aware kind of way.) As icing on the cake, I’m virtually certain to be long gone before the oceans boil or the robots rise up and massacre humanity.
If the question is what kind of things get better with age… certainly not french fries.
What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?
I don’t, but I have a lot of strategies for being more content in the face of various situations and environments — including uncomfortable ones. These include the yogic practice of dispassionate witnessing, minimalism, travel (and specifically minimalist travel to places – the less familiar the better,) and intense physical activity.
I think comfort as a major objective in life is overrated, and virtually insures a discontented life. A life in which one can be content, whatever may come along, is a happy life.
That’s a tough one, but I have to go with a trip to the Peruvian Andes about twelve-ish years ago. As a person from Northwest Indiana (where anthills appear on topographic maps,) it was my first time in the Very High Altitude range. We hiked through the Salkantay Pass (15,000+ft / 4500+m) on the second day of a trek with me vomiting (water, as my stomach was long devoid of other contents) every couple switch-backs. I’m told I was literally green, but can’t confirm for lack of mirrors. But I trudged through, one glacial step at a time.
At the end of our trip, we were in Arequipa and needed to get back to Cuzco for our flight out. After buying bus tickets, we discovered that the road from Arequipa to Cuzco would be shut down by a transportation strike, and that everyone was honoring the strike as they sometimes turned violent. After a day of frustration, we surrendered to the situation, traded in our Arequipa-Cuzco tickets for Arequipa-Lima tickets, and we got into Lima (where we had a layover) early enough to arrange to join the flight there.
The reason this stands out as such a wonderful trip (besides all the beautiful sights: Titicaca, Machu Picchu, the Andes, all the Incan ruins and old Spanish churches; not to mention the delicious food) is the powerful life lessons it taught me. First, I’ve never felt closer to death than crossing through Salkantay Pass, and yet one step at a time got me through. Second, I learned not to butt heads with changing circumstance, but rather flow over, around, or under. Lastly, trips where things go wrong produce the dividend of great stories. Nobody cares about your trip to Paris where everything went smoothly, but they can’t get enough about the trip to Zaire where you got Malaria and were caught up in an insurrection or the cruise where passengers started turning to zombies.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 