For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
Source: inspirationandchai.com
Comments from news.ycombinator.com
If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.
I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; Don't lose the now.
I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me.
But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.
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Sometimes I think that I might be one of the few people who will be on my deathbed, regretting not working harder.
When I look back on my life, it's mostly been unfinished projects, or good ideas that didn't get far.
I've always been told how much potential I have, and I even feel this in myself. But so far, there's not a lot to show for it. Sometimes I've spent years not doing much of anything except looking at sunsets, walking in parks, reading books, and being creative, and all the things that are supposed to make life wonderful. These idle years weren't all a bowl of cherries (mostly it was due to depression) but it still wasn't so different from the slow sort of lifestyle exalted above. And I still find it lacking.
We only have a limited time here, and in our age, individuals have extraordinary leverage. Isn't that also a reason to try as hard as we can to make some kind of dent in the universe? If I forgo a few sunsets, but make a thousand people's lives better, did I really do it wrong?
When it comes to regrets, the literary image that stays with me comes from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This part is usually omitted from popularizations and films. Marley's ghost has delivered the warning about the three spirits, but also shows him a vision of spirits wandering the earth:
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
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I always have mixed feelings when reading about the wisdom of people who are dying. I don't doubt that they feel the way they say they feel at that point, but are their judgments relevant to how they WOULD HAVE felt for years, not weeks, back when they still had years to live? On their deathbeds, when they value family so much more than career, they wish they'd spent more time on the former, less on the latter. But if they had actually lived that way for decades, would they have been any happier? Can we know for sure? They might be romanticizing the time they could have spent with family, but didn't, and underestimating the discouragement of living with the professional consequences of "spending less time at the office," while successful coworkers were spending more.
I suspect that the real key to success in life over all is to carefully identify your priorities and to deliberately, passionately, and courageously pursue them, rather than being governed by accident, convenience, fear, and inertia.
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I guess it remains to be seen conclusively when I fall terminally ill or get close to death of old age, but in my mind, it is not possible to have a life without some kind of theoretical regrets. Every choice you make to spend every moment a certain way is necessarily mutually exclusive with spending it any other way, and there are only so many moments and so many things one can realistically do.
I'm quite positively certain that if asked to reflect on all the things I regret near death, and truly chose to entertain the question from that angle, then I would find something to regret no matter how I lived my life until that point. There will always be could-have-beens, should-have-beens, what-ifs and maybe-if-I-did/didn'ts.
Furthermore, in a practical sense, life is an economically bounded experience; life in a world with finite resources, finite time, and within a society of other people always entails strong elements of concession, compromise and accommodation. You cannot lead a purely hedonistic life unconstrained by material or political limitations. What you do will always be subsumed to some extent by exigencies you would rather not have, by the needs and wants of others, by nature, and various forces you can't control. So, I don't think it's intelligible to implore people to "lead a life without regrets."
I'm not saying there isn't wisdom in being aware that life is short, and you only get one, and that there are some things you will wish you had done if your life ends up being a lot shorter than you expected. However, it seems to me that an important part of finding peace is acknowledging and coming to terms with the objective facts of the human condition and the inescapable psychological truths that accompany them. Seeing your existence as it is and not as it could hypothetically be is an important pillar of peace and comfort for the soul. The reality is, you will always have "regrets": there are always infinite alternate possibilities for any conditional branch, there are practically infinite variables.
"Live a life you won't regret" is the wrong way to look out at the world and your relationship to it. A more constructive approach may be to say, "Lead a good life," whatever that means to you. It is not logically equivalent to "lead a life about which you will never wish something could have been different."
Also, it is important to emphasise the critical distinction between a) regretting that you had not done something differently, in that all it would take for you to not regret it is to have made a different - and equally accessible - choice, versus b) regretting that you could not have done something differently, in the sense that you wish circumstances or conditions had been such as to make possible or make more likely that you could have made - and actually carried out - a different choice.
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Here are some things I wish I understood when I was 17:
1. Being "unique" doesn't mean trying to alienate everyone else. Many of the people that you meet, and who seem simple or uninteresting, have a great story to tell or a special talent to share. So, trying to "fit in" a little bit and getting to know lots of people doesn't make you a lesser person in any way; it makes you greater for the broader perspectives that you will get.
2. As you begin to learn to find something of value in each person, also begin to learn to find something of value in the work that you do. Stubbornly refusing to do homework only hurts you, and proves nothing. This is the best time to begin developing the discipline required to focus completely on a mundane task and finish it as quickly as possible; if you can get the hang of that, then there's no job you can't master.
3. Do not talk yourself out of saying "hi" to that girl. You're missing out on a lot of fun, it won't hurt you, and the sooner you start practicing this the sooner you'll get the hang of it.
4. Make sure you maintain a healthy balance in your life. Working all day behind a computer and then going home to play around with a computer until the early morning will eventually cause you to burn out and completely disrupt everything you have in order to feel healthy again. Even though you enjoy it now, you're better off leaving some time for learning how to work on a car, or running around outside, or socializing; then you'll have something to do when you can't stand working on a computer anymore.
5. Most of all, spend less time on the internet. In 10 years you'll barely remember any of the message boards that are so important to you now; you'll have trouble remembering many of the people that you associate with online; you won't be certain exactly what it was you did with all your time online. If you want to socialize, meet some people in person; if you want to learn something, start with a book; if you want to waste some time, try another hobby; and if you want pornography, try finding a girl to say hi to instead.
6. Oh, and finally: you probably won't heed any of this advice anyway, because you're irrationally stubborn, determined to do things your own way, and still struggling with some bad habits that you refuse to get help with. That's OK. You'll be fine so long as you keep pushing yourself a little bit every day.
I'm sure none of these apply to you, but I wished I knew them 15 years ago. :-)
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