No Regrets
I have been reflecting a lot on recent days, when I’ve been fortunate and lucky enough to travel to reconnect with some very special mentors in my life. One, who is nearing the end of her life and journey with cancer, the other whose wife just began hers.
It was a deeply meaningful trip for me, and I of course hope it was meaningful for them, too, to reconnect after all these years with their former student from over 20 years ago.
I’ve thought a lot about what really matters in this life. I suppose this is something I have thought a lot about since I was a young person, as I wrote about this even then. I’ve always been drawn to this singular, existentialist question. To the essence of what this life is all about, and what will it all have meant when we come to the end of our own.
I read this wonderful and now very famous article by Bonnie Ware, a hospice nurse in Australia, on the Top Five Regrets of the Dying several years ago. She’s since published a book on the stories shared by countless patients at the end of their lives. In case any of you haven’t heard of or read this article or book by Bonnie Ware, I would love to share these top five regrets of the dying with you all here. They are powerful.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying – By Bronnie Ware
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.
When we come to the end of our lives, I hope and pray that we will be able to say with conviction, that we have none of these, and that we have no regrets at all.
How are you living your life today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next year?
How will you dare to the live the life that is true to you, and only you?
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