By Genna Feld, Annie Nolan, Kade Schmitz, & Griffen Klauser
Living in the modern, fast-paced culture that we do, death is a topic largely forgotten, or simply considered too difficult to think about. As individuals and as a society, if we accept death as a part of everyone’s lives, we can confront it and even plan for it. The inability to face death often leaves people with regrets later on in life. Death is inevitable and we have much to learn about how to prepare for it, from those who are near the end of their life. Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse, spent years working in palliative care. She worked specifically with patients in the last 12 years of their lives. Bronnie recorded some of their dying regrets, which she eventually used to write a book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The following is a list of the most common regrets, and some of our thoughts about them.
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This seems to be the most common regret of all, as it is incredibly easy to go through life searching for the approval of others. When many people reach the end of their life, they realize how many dreams they had that went unfulfilled, or how much time they spent trying to reach goals that they didn’t truly want for themselves. If you spend your life living for other people’s expectations of you, you can be certain that you will ignore your own. It can absolutely be difficult to focus on your own goals, especially in the digital age we live in where it is so common to compare yourself to others on social media. However, in order to avoid feeling the most common regret that people feel close to death, it is imperative to find a way to look inward and figure out what you truly want. Once you find out what it is you want out of life, put yourself first, try to stop comparing yourself to others, and commit to putting in the work necessary to achieve your dreams. Remember, you alone are in control of your life.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
In a society where work is a priority for so many people, one has to wonder if dedication to a job is a healthy way for a person to live. The constant stress of work can often scale up as promotions lead to more and more responsibility. With more and more societal pressure to work it should come as no surprise to hear that when terminally ill patients were asked their biggest regrets, “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” came up repeatedly. Almost every single male patient regretted wasting time with work and missing out on family or social time. Although working hard does come with rewards, long term dedication can have severely negative drawbacks. There is a forced misconception that ties hard word to happiness and success when in reality, happiness comes from social and familial interactions. People work more in our country than anywhere else in the world. Americans take less holidays and vacation days and even spend more time commuting than most first world countries. I believe if there is one takeaway from this revelation from the dying, it is that work does not guarantee happiness. We as a society should learn to prioritize our time and spend it with friends and family and not on work. Even though work is important it should not take over your life, but it will unless you make a conscious effort to manage your work/life balance.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Life is full of situations where it is difficult to say what we really feel, but sometimes, not expressing our feelings leaves us with regrets later on. Being honest and authentic is how we create the most powerful personal connections. It is common for humans to suppress our thoughts and feelings in an effort to keep the peace with those around us. However, it is important to realize that we can never hope to control the reactions of others. Some may react poorly when you say something that they perhaps did not want to hear, but in the end you might find that they appreciated your authenticity and it improved the relationship while allowing you to be yourself. Pride is another factor that often causes us to suppress our feelings. I personally have restrained myself from saying ‘I’m Sorry’ to friends because of my pride. Other people have difficulties saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I appreciate you’. These are simple phrases and yet they would mean so much to the people in our lives, and have the potential to cause so much pain if they remained unsaid. There is nothing more tragic than someone mourning the death of a loved one and expressing regret over something they did not say. Have the courage to tell people how you feel, and especially tell the people close to you that you love them because we never know when we could be seeing someone for the last time.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
In our modern lives that are constantly shaped by new people that we meet and grow close to, it is easy to let some friendship slip through our fingers. When we recognize that we are close to death, however, it is common for us to remember people that we once lost and desperately try to rekindle the flame of the faded friendship. These friendships are often lost out of neglect rather than malice. We focus too much on the business of our modern lives and this business is exactly the reason why we let close friends become estranged and later forget about them. We become too focused on making money among other superficial goals and consequently prioritize it over beautiful friendships. When death closes in on us, though, we remember what it truly important to us– specifically, intangible forces such as friendship. Trying to find these friends once we remember to appreciate their presence in our lives is, more often than not, very difficult– if not impossible. We are typically too weak or unavailable towards the end of our lives to put in the necessary effort to find the people we lost. In the last few weeks of our lives, we rid ourselves of the veil that centers our lives around the material world and are finally able to clearly see what we hold most important to us: connection with the people that have shaped our lives with their love.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Throughout our lives we will hear over and over again that happiness trumps everything, from money to relationships. However, we often have trouble realizing that happiness is a choice, until it is too late. That is why it is not surprising that one of the top five regrets people have before dying is that they wish they had let themselves be happier. It is likely that this regret stems from the previous four. As a result of working too hard, lack of expression, and living for others, people find that they had to lie to themselves about their happiness. Or, they were stuck waiting for happiness to magically come to them, instead of going out and creating their own happiness. Bronnie Ware says in her book, that sometimes happiness is blocked by a problem or tragedy that we can not let go of. If it is a betrayal or loss of someone, those close to death wish they had allowed themselves to overcome it and be happy. Bronnie also talks about patients that did not believe they deserved happiness; maybe they did something they viewed as bad, which caused lingering feelings of guilt and shame. Not putting this belief aside and allowing themselves to be happy with life, led to feelings of regret in multiple patients that Bronnie spent time with. Hopefully by being able to recognize what causes regret at the end of life, people can live their lives in a way in which their final days are not full of regret.
Dear Death... 