I thank Ajaytao for these words of wisdom and want to reblog them and write some thoughts about my own life.

Turning 80 this year I can say that I have had a good life. Even now at this advanced stage in my life I can still enjoy life and do not find it too hard to cope with age related aches and pains. Do I wish I could have changed something in my life? Oh yes, I wished I could have changed not having had to grow up in Germany during wartime and the difficult postwar years. Of course these are things we cannot change. But WW II for sure turned me in an antiwar person for the rest of my life.

False advertising, propaganda, and outright lies, these are the things I am very sensitive to. Blame my childhood experiences. I learned early on that you cannot believe everything a leader might tell you. We lived like paupers after the war. I went to school till I was eighteen, but I did not apply myself. I never learned to study hard. Probably I could not see any sense in it. At eighteen I started secretarial work. A few years later came marriage and children and migration to Australia.

Ever since I left school (and during my school years as well!) I had very little money to live on. However I was never desperate for more money. Throughout my life my motto was I have to make do with the little money I have. It turned out that somehow it was always enough. My husband and I are very good savers. We paid off our house with a building society loan. The first few second hand cars we bought on hire purchase. Apart from that we never went into debt. When we travelled overseas we used our own saved up money.

Do I wish I could have changed my past? Sure I would have liked to grow up without the deprivations of war. I would have liked my father to be home all the time. I would have liked my parents to live together after the war. These are things I definitely could not have changed. What could I have changed? Study hard, go to university, end up in a profession I would have loved to work in? Well, it was not to be. I did not have the guts to study hard.

Even though we were rather poor the first few years in Australia, I did not feel poor. I was happy having a family and I enjoyed the easy going Australian lifestyle. How much did I change over the years? Maybe not all that much. I am probably basically still the person I was when I came to Australia aged 25. Some major changes in my education would probably have been possible before I even entered high-school. I was just easy going at school, always got good marks without much effort; except towards the end of my school career at commercial school, which I hated!

I remember as a teenager I spent hours dreaming about a wonderful person who would come along and give me some guidance. I never did get to know such a person, except in my dreams! But I was very happy later on with romance and married life and children. Well, I must say, I am quite happy with the way things turned out to be in my personal life. Still, one thinks sometimes how things could have been somewhat different.