The Top Five Regrets Of The Dying Read Online

[Paul]

I know you have great ambitions in your photography and life. So how do you prevent regretting anything in your life? Once again, going back to the regrets of the dying, here are some things I would advise avoiding (if you want to live a happy life).

Even with my photography, I only solicit the opinion of three people: Josh White, Neil Ta, and Cindy Nguyen. They give me no-bullshit feedback; and they know who I am. They know what I am trying to accomplish with my photography. So why should I care about what others think of my work? As long as they like my work, and I like my work, what does it matter what the world-at-large thinks of my work?

Let us not seek fancy shit in life; let us be content with simple coffee, our simple camera (thank God for the Ricoh GR), a simple meal (eggs and bacon), a few close friends, the few followers we might have on social media, our ugly (yet functioning) car, our simple clothes, our lovely IKEA table, our health, and the joy of being surrounded with fellow human beings (and not being in a prison cell, or worse, on Mars).

I often switch between paper books, my Kindle paper white, reading on iPad, smartphone (whatever is handy). Ultimately I prefer paper books, and because I am at home and not traveling, I have been re-reading old books. What I currently am reading:

For eight years Bronnie Ware worked as a palliative nurse, taking care of people in the final days of their lives. She had so many profoundly illuminating experiences that she decided to write an article that went on to become a book.

In my latest Live Brave podcast, I share our wonderful conversation about what she learned during her years with the dying and, in particular, the five most common regrets of people as they arrive at the twilight of their lives.

So wherever you are along your own life journey right now, beware the pull toward the familiar and the comfortable. It may be the easiest path to take in the short term, sparing you the risk of what you fear, but it can exact a steep toll in the long arch of your life.

En espaol 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 12 weeks of their lives.

Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected: denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Yet every single patient found peace before departing. Every one of them.

This came from every male patient 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.

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.

Often they would not truly realize 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 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 all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks: love and relationships.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize 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 themselves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

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New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake,country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnightevaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-grey atthe bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered inthe sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, tinderydust blew into my eyes and down my throat.

I knew something was wrong with me that summer, becauseall I could think about was the Rosenbergs and how stupid I'dbeen to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanginglimp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'dtotted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside theslick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue.

Look what can happen in this country, they'd say. A girllives in some out-of-the-way town for nineteen years, so poorshe can't afford a magazine, and then she gets a scholarship tocollege and wins a prize here and a prize there and ends upsteering New York like her own private car.

Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I justbumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from partiesto my hotel and back to work like a numb trolley-bus. I guess Ishould have been excited the way most of the other girls were,but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and veryempty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dullyalong in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

We had all won a fashion magazine contest, by writingessays and stories and poems and fashion blurbs, and as prizesthey gave us jobs in New York for a month, expenses paid, andpiles and piles of free bonuses, like ballet tickets and passesto fashion shows and hair stylings at a famous expensivesalon and chances to meet successful people in the field of ourdesire and advice about what to do with our particularcomplexions.

I still have the make-up kit they gave me, fitted out for aperson with brown eyes and brown hair: an oblong of brownmascara with a tiny brush, and a round basin of blueeye-shadow just big enough to dab the tip of your finger in, andthree lipsticks ranging from red to pink, all cased in the samelittle gilt box with a mirror on one side. I also have a whiteplastic sun-glasses case with coloured shells and sequins and agreen plastic starfish sewed on to it.

I realized we kept piling up these presents because it was asgood as free advertising for the firms involved, but I couldn't becynical. I got such a kick out of all those free gifts showering onto us. For a long time afterwards I hid them away, but later,when I was all right again, I brought them out, and I still havethem around the house. I use the lipsticks now and then, andlast week I cut the plastic starfish off the sun-glasses case for thebaby to play with.

These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on thesun-roof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keepup their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talkedwith one of them, and she was bored with yachts and boredwith flying around in aeroplanes and bored with skiing inSwitzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil.

Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak.Nineteen years, and I hadn't been out of New England exceptfor this trip to New York. It was my first big chance, but here Iwas, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like somuch water.

I'd never known a girl like Doreen before. Doreen camefrom a society girls' college down South and had bright whitehair standing out in a cotton candy fluff round her head andblue eyes like transparent agate marbles, hard and polished andjust about indestructible, and a mouth set in a sort of perpetualsneer. I don't mean a nasty sneer, but an amused, mysterioussneer, as if all the people around her were pretty silly and shecould tell some good jokes on them if she wanted to.

Doreen singled me out right away. She made me feel I wasthat much sharper than the others, and she really was wonderfullyfunny. She used to sit next to me at the conference table,and when the visiting celebrities were talking she'd whisperwitty sarcastic remarks to me under her breath.

Her college was so fashion-conscious, she said, that all thegirls had pocket-book covers made out of the same material astheir dresses, so each time they changed their clothes they had amatching pocket-book. This kind of detail impressed me. Itsuggested a whole life of marvellous, elaborate decadence thatattracted me like a magnet.

'What are you sweating over that for?' Doreen lounged onmy bed in a peach silk dressing-gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellownails with an emery board, while I typed up the draft ofan interview with a best-selling novelist.

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