42. Top five regrets of the dying

A big reason why I write TMMW is to create a little virtual community in the world that supports a person's earnest desire for creativity and living well. What does it mean to live well? To me, that is an open question and a changing one.

I've heard it described that dying can be hard work. It's not at all how it gets depicted in movies. We spend our lives fighting to make sense of the world and to stay healthy and safe. It flies in the face of all these efforts that we’ll need to unravel or let go of all that.

Yet, dying is a natural part of life.

As much as any of us might complain about how hard it is to get by, to reconcile what we should do or who we must become, to live a good life amidst the actual circumstances we face, all of this tends to be outweighed when considering what happens at the end--which may come to any of us at any time.

One of our numerous societally-endorsed neuroses is that we should try and avoid any mention of death. We should distract ourselves more and more effectively in an effort to procrastinate this eventuality.

People get very upset even at the mention of death. We're conditioned to fight against its apparent wrongness. Death would seem to challenge all that we have worked so very hard for.

Death is the great equalizer, we say. You can't take it with you, we say.

Bronnie Ware, a caregiver for the dying, put together a list based on her work on the five most common regrets she heard expressed by those on their deathbeds.

I share these here because they are powerful to consider and can be transformative in shaping your life choices so that you are living your best life—not an imagined one, not someone else's.

"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

Although I don't expect that these statements are necessarily literally repeated word for word by the mouths of different people as they lay dying, I believe the wording with each of them is important.

The sentiment for this one certainly is relatable.

No one escapes from the trap of (at least at times) trying their hardest to live what is, in fact, someone else's idea of a good life.

It calls to mind the quote by the American poet E.E. Cummings:

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

"I wish I hadn't worked so hard."

In all likelihood, this will probably be the one out of these five that I say on my deathbed.

It's hard to get to a place where hard work isn't necessary. Even what's most important in life—a life of truth and beauty and peace and connection—does, in fact, take a hell of a lot of work to arrive at, in a very similar manner to how it takes work to cultivate a high degree of competence as an artist or craftsman.

I wasn't born into a war zone in this life, but I was born into a certain society and set of conditions. Although all men are born equal, that inequality quickly reveals itself over time. It takes work to shake free of conditioning, for example.

I don't think the wisdom to this statement is that work is bad, that we are supposed to dispense with hard work, but rather to point at the misalignment.

Much work is distractive and even avoidant of a person's truth. The best reasonable antidote to this that I have found is to hold these things in the larger context not only of a set of goals and aspirations but of a broader quest you are embarking on, understanding that each one is temporary.

"I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

To some extent, fear and anxiety are a near-constant experience for biological life. We are pulled by the desire to stay safe and secure, to have a peaceful environment and harmonious relations. In the broader scheme, this is an illusion. What good is a peaceful, wrong life? In reading from a script that is not your own?

Whether it's choosing to stay small, to not stand up for oneself, or to hide behind preapproved views and opinions that conflict with inner deeply-held knowing, such actions reinforce the limited safety of a prison or cage.

"I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."

This one hits home, too, in a way. Not because I feel I have abandoned my friends as much as I have simply moved around a lot. I know that increasing numbers of people are in a similar boat. Whether for school, work or, like me, to experience different areas for different reasons at different times, when you pick up and move, you do more than introduce yourself to a different physical setting. To state the obvious, you also leave the other one behind.

While deep friendships are possible to take with you, it's the acquaintances and outer-circle friends that you end up missing most. There just isn't a way of making that work when you move from place to place or change social circles, places of employment, or pastimes.

As a result, our social circles tend to get smaller.

That's why I think it's important to realize that many people feel the same. It makes it feel less criminal that there's a need to make new friends.

"I wish that I had let myself be happier."

The wording of this one is especially powerful, that happiness could be a natural state, something we are already centered within if only we would allow it to spread into our actual experience.

What's just as remarkable about this is what must arise in a person to bring them this realization. Is it the simplification that happens as you die, that there is less need to crave this state or that condition to feel joyful?

I don't think this sentiment demonizes striving. It's a distinction as to whether we strive for or not for what we allow ourselves to receive.

Joy is an act of will.

There's so much nonsense blocking most people from accessing that. So much baggage. If the awareness of happiness can come to someone on their deathbed, why should you be excluded from it right now?

The top five regrets of the dying

• "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."

• "I wish I hadn't worked so hard."

• "I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

• "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends."

• "I wish that I had let myself be happier."