REGRETS OF THE DYING

I get so many email newsletters – many I don’t read for months, a lot are trying to see stuff, or peddle various items that I really don’t need or want.  I keep my subscriptions though because once in a while they will contain a gem.

I received one such newsletter this week.  It jarred me!  It quoted a post by Bronnie Ware.The gist of the article was that in her career in palliative care, she had documented the regrets of those that are dying.  She wrote about the 5 most common regrets. Here’s the one that got to me.

 

 

 

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

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.”

May I offer two observations as well? Our health, and with all the illness that abounds, some very close to home, this is the kicker – keep healthy and do what ever you can do while you still can do it. It’s such a cliche. But it is true.

The other is do not fear anything. Hard to do…but fear is what really STOPS everything.  I guess this is where the bucket list ideas come from, a way to retrench our dreams and keep them alive.  Fear is what leads to that “quiet desperation,”  the status quo, same old same old. And if you’re living the same old, it sounds to me like that is some great life, unfulfilled.

I have had my stretches of dull routine, but quite frequently I do break out of that pattern. But I do have many more things I need and want to do, to experience and to test myself to see if I can “DO IT.”  This article was a fine kick in the butt that we all need to be more demanding in what we get from life.

See what you think, Read the full article here.  It’s very much something to consider seriously.