This is a serious topic.  If you had your life to live over, how would you live it?

It seemed appropriate that I started to write this column on the longest day of the year — June 20, 2017. It has taken me a few months to finish it.

This is my attempt to define a perfect life and how important it is to aspire to live that perfect life.

I write this as a new great-grandfather, as of three months ago, when little Hailey Renee Marie Barnett came into the world. I am writing this for her, plus our 13 grandchildren and all those other descendants who are not here yet.

My most important conclusion is that the greatest wealth a man can acquire in his lifetime is a healthy and loving family. Nothing else comes close.

So just how “deep” should I make this essay? Well, here goes:

In recent years I have been hanging out with some folks who contend that one’s most important goals in life should be finding truth, goodness and beauty.

Looking back on a career in journalism, it is easy to agree about the importance of truth.  Rarely is truth relative. When all the facts are in, truth will usually rise to the top.

When I was younger I loved the concept that all things were relative, which means just about everything was determined by the situation. After years of dealing with life, you realize that relativism is over-rated. There are absolute truths in this world and you need to find them out and then live your life accordingly. There is right versus wrong. There is good versus bad. Character and ethics are real and both will help you find the truth.

In my life, I did not have to look too far to find real goodness. My wife Nancy of 51 years is the best person I have ever known. How on earth I ever found her is a big mystery to me.

She is the best thing that ever happened to me and let’s hope all you folks out there reading this will be as fortunate when it comes to relationships.

Nancy is a Jefferson Award recipient for all the good she has done in raising money to fight cancer and helping the needy with the Christmas food basket program.

When it comes to beauty, I say just open your eyes. We live in a beautiful place populated by beautiful people.

In recent years, I have worked with 54 Wyoming-based photographers. I love their outlook when it comes to Wyoming. A great many of them love a foggy day or a hard rain or a heavy snow because of the opportunities it gives them to photograph our beautiful landscape in a new way.  Now, I try very hard not to complain about the weather. This is difficult as I get older.

If I had my life to live over, I would not have squandered so much money and time on toys. A big boat comes to mind. Sure, we had a lot of fun with it, but what an expense and what a time suck.

For a long time I believed that whoever died with the most toys wins.  What a joke! And it really is a joke. I think a better saying would be, “he who dies with the most friends wins.”

I should have gotten in better physical shape.  This would have allowed me to better explore this wonderful country we live in.

Sure, I have been all over Wyoming from the Medicine Wheel to Medicine Bow and from Pinedale to Pine Bluffs and from Evanston to Evansville, but there are places that are unreachable because of not being in good enough physical condition. 

One old-timer once wrote that if she could live her life over, she would have eaten more ice cream and less beans. I think I did eat my quota of ice cream and probably should have been eating more beans.

If I could live my life over, I would not have been so competitive. I was a holy terror to my business competitors and, as a result, they were hard on me.

And I was even way too competitive with family and friends. Bless your business competitors because they make you better. But it took me way too long to learn that I could get much more done through cooperation rather than through intense competition.

I liken my life to a baseball game, and we get to play nine innings.  If so, I am hoping this is the middle of the seventh and it is time for a stretch. Maybe time to sing the song, “Sweet Caroline.”  I sure hope it is not the bottom of the ninth.

If I had my life to live over, I would find more joy in everything that I did. And I would strive to provide joy to others as a main goal of my life.

Check out additional columns at www.billsniffin.com. He has published six books.  His coffee table book series has sold 30,000 copies. You can find them at www.wyomingwonders.com.