Top five regrets of the dying

[Nords]

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Paul Graham (Y Combinator) had an interesting response to this article. Here's the entire text:
The Top of My Todo List

April 2012

A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the biggest regrets of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see myself—can see myself—making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes.

If you had to compress them into a single piece of advice, it might be: don't be a cog. The 5 regrets paint a portrait of post-industrial man, who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances, then turns dutifully till he stops.

The alarming thing is, the mistakes that produce these regrets are all errors of omission. You forget your dreams, ignore your family, suppress your feelings, neglect your friends, and forget to be happy. Errors of omission are a particularly dangerous type of mistake, because you make them by default.

I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? Ideally you transform your life so it has other defaults. But it may not be possible to do that completely. As long as these mistakes happen by default, you probably have to be reminded not to make them. So I inverted the 5 regrets, yielding a list of 5 commands:

Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

which I then put at the top of the file I use as a todo list.

 

[Lsbcal]

Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.

Worthwhile objectives!

Kind of what I've been drifting towards since ER.

 

[obgyn65]

Great list, thanks for sharing Michael. I am not in palliative care but I have been with many patients with terminal cancer. I can confirm that in many cases, patients expressed regrets about not following their dreams - lots of "what ifs"...

Enjoy life while it lasts.

An interesting newspaper article about people in their final days and what they say they regret most about their lives.

Many of these are frequently discussed here. Article m.guardian.co.uk

 

[ERhoosier]

Nothing like near-death experience to remind us that life is about LIVING!!!

 

[kumquat]

My DB is in 'long term care'. I don't know, but suspect, it's really 'palliative care'. Oh, BTW, he's 55.

He has MS. Five years ago, he limped. Today, he can't sit upright in a wheelchair or even answer a one word required question. All motor skills are f'd up. He can, however, laugh at the right time and even issue an appropraite one word response occasionally.

I doubt that he wishes he'd done anything different in his life. He took his family on a couple of Mexican vacations. He also took them camping. Sorry, no reservations on Virgin Galactica.

What more can a guy do but his best?

 

[Moscyn]

If someone ask me what are my regrets on my deathbed, it will be regretting I let him/her ask me this question. I want to die happy without thinking of regrets or what I wished I had done. And if there should be any questions, it would be, "what wishes do you want fulfilled before you die?" That was the question my family asked my dad (he died a few months after we posed the question to him). He did not have any grandeur request (adding that he indeed lived a happy life) but just asked us to contact all his siblings (9 who are still alive) so that they can either visit or call him before he died. If they hadn't, I guess that would have been his regret.

 

[traineeinvestor]

I hope that when my time comes my biggest regret will be not quitting my job sooner....