Over the past 30 years, I’ve traveled to some of the poorest and most extreme places on earth including Somalia, Haiti, Inner Mongolia, Gaza, Bangladesh, Nepal and Uganda.

But one of my most memorable trips was to Pecos, Texas, a little oil town with a population of 9,666.

When I arrived at his trailer home, Big Jim Ed seemed surprised I actually showed up. He was probably wondering why I’d travel 2,000 miles to meet an old man wearing pajamas, sitting in a wheelchair hooked up to an oxygen tank.

“I told you I ain’t much to look at!” he laughed as we shook hands. I pulled up a chair and sat down at his kitchen table.

“What do you have there? “I asked him to point to a large tray full of pills.

“Well, I’m running a little pharmacy here as you can see,” and he gave me a quick introduction. “This pill is for my diabetes, these are blood thinners, this one is a beta blocker, this one is for my cholesterol, these pills manage my hypertension….”

On and on he went.

I had spoken with Big Jim Ed on the phone many times as he was one of our biggest donors. His calls often lasted 30 minutes, sometimes an hour. I could tell he was lonely and sometimes he just wanted to talk. But I could also tell he really cared about the kids we were helping.

Big Jim Ed had personally sponsored almost 20,000 of our surgeries.

That was a lot of lives that he helped change.

I was grateful to him for his extraordinary generosity. And after all our calls, I grew fond of him.
When he turned 85, and his health began to fade, I knew I had to visit him and shake his hand and thank him in person.

I opened up my laptop and began to show Big Jim Ed some before-and-after photos of kids whose lives he had helped change.

An 11-year old orphan in Uganda who was severely burned when a kerosene lamp tipped over and set his family’s hut on fire, killing his parents and siblings. For 8 years his chin was melted to his chest. Our surgeons fixed that in 10 minutes.

A 9-year old girl in India who went blind when she was three. After six years of blindness, our surgeons restored her eyesight through a 15-minute surgery that cost $300.

A 5-year old boy in Bangladesh who was born crippled with clubfoot. In six weeks, our surgeons straightened his feet and cured his clubfoot. Now he can stand up, walk and run like any other kid.

It didn’t take long before Big Jim Ed started crying. I kept showing him my slides for a while but stopped when I realized he wasn’t crying for these kids — he was crying for himself.

And he wanted to talk.

“Brian, I have $7 million dollars in the bank…” he said shaking his head as if it was a bad thing.

“But I am all alone… I wish I’d done so many things differently. Wish I had married… wish I had kids…wish I had travelled. And you know something? I really wish I’d been a little nicer to people.”

As he spoke, I looked down at his big tray full of pills and thought to myself, they don’t make the pill that Big Jim Ed really needs.

Because his biggest problem is regret.

He could save 20,000 children — but he couldn’t save himself.

And I bet he would trade that $7 million he has in a heartbeat to have another chance to live his life over.

Big Jim Ed gave me a lot to think about as I drove the 100 miles back to the airport.

I thought it was sad that it took 85 years for Big Jim Ed to figure out what kind of life he really wanted to lead.

I imagine that most of us, will eventually reach a point in our lives where we’ll be sitting in front of a bowl full of pills, or a mirror, or someone that makes us look back and takes stock of our lives.

We’ll ask ourselves, what did we do with the precious 70-80 years of life we were given?

I think that it’s never too early to start asking that question.

And it’s never too late to change the answer.