I apologize for being silent lately. I have been swamped but overall a good kind of swamped. But I will start blogging more often as I need to do that. I want to talk about an article that I had read recently.
This article was written by this nurse who worked in palliative care, and talked to her dying patients about how their lives were and everytime they looked back at their lives, they talked about their regrets. She had noted the most common regrets they had and found the top five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
Unfortunately this is a regret that a lot of people are still going to have, and will be expressing it when they are in the same position. When you grow up with a lot of expectations set upon you, you are likely going to be living a life that is not true to you. You may find yourself sacrificing opportunities and things that would have been great for you all because it would not have made others who are important in your life happy. And if it does not make them happy, you will feel guilty for even thinking of taking an opportunity that would have been perfect for you. That would be a sad reason to not live the life you were supposed to live. Unfortunately more and more people are doing this, and are missing out as a result. I DID fall into this category but I am working on living the life that is right for me. I don’t want to have this regret hanging over me when I am on my death bed.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
Well I am on the fence with this one. I mean the fact of the matter is, times are tougher than they were back in the day. If you want to live comfortably you need to work. And if you have hopes and dreams you want to accomplish, you need to work. It is a different story if you are working 24/7 and not allowing anything else in your life to come in. That is not good, however, in this day in age, you need to work, and if you have high ambitions, then you need to work hard. Simple as that.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Well I have that regret now because there were many moments in my life where I had the opportunity to speak up and never did. And yes I never liked confrontation but sometimes confrontation is necessary in order to get what you want and to get your point across. But I am correcting that. I don’t want to have that regret on my death bed.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Well it is easy to get caught up in life’s demands and forgetting to keep in touch with your friends is unfortunately a common thing. I am so busy that I don’t see people very often, maybe once in a while. Being touch with friends via social networks is good for me, right now. And hopefully it is something I will not regret later on. And if things in my life are a bit less hectic then yes, that is the best time to get caught up with friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Wow, I think this is one regret most people will have while laying on their deathbed. Especially with all of the media around us filling our minds with doom and gloom, you will not be happy if you take it all in so seriously. And yes it is true, all of us need to practice gratitude more often than the majority of us do. But here is the other thing. I realize that “things” are not supposed to make you happy but if there is something that you have a deep desire to achieve, working for it with a good attitude will make you happy. So sometimes in order to be happy, you need to work- especially if the mission you are meant to accomplish involves working for it.
I mean it is easy to have mixed thoughts on these regrets that the dying have right now because I am not in their position. And maybe it is a good thing to note because you don’t want to have those regrets when you are in that position. I know I certainly won’t. But all I can say is that if I achieve everything that I am working for, I will not regret one bit for working hard for it.