Interesting Article...
There was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.
Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."
Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:
- 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. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."
- I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."
- I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/0…
What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?
Find this particularly interesting... especially considering the demographics of WSO and how hard we're grinding to get jobs that will essentially leave us without lives. Puts a lot of things in perspective.
1.) Not going to a target
2.) Not going into HBS
3.) Not making Partner at a MF PE shop
4.) Not having a library at HBS named after me
5.) Not passing the CFA
What's the most prestigious thing to regret on your death bed???
People go through stages when they die. You could climb Mt. Everest and walk on the moon and you will still regret something when given a month or two to look back on your life.
Ant -
Agree with you big time. That said, there are definitely things that people will not regret when they die. No one will regret spending a lot of time with their family, raising the kids right, that sort of shit.
I think the best thing on that list is #1. You have to live the life you want to live, not the life that's expected of you.
How existential of you
Our system of morals and values, as well as the incentives and punishments that drive us were created by older people in a position of power. The last thing they want is for anyone to contemplate these things. All is well, go back to sleep, AND GET BACK TO FUCKING WORK is what we are fed from cradle to grave.
With the technology and resources available, I'd like to think that the standard of living for every person on earth would be ten times higher than it is. For whatever the reasons, it is not. Humans are their own worst enemy.
As for me, I know this stuff and I'm cashing in my chips after a certain point. The guy sitting behind the desk at the age of 75 who has these regrets is an asshole and while I truly pity them, I have no sympathy. When I die, I want to have lived a full life with no regrets....there is a whole world of cool stuff to do and see and that's why I'm making money.
Work to live, not live to work.
I will always regret that masseuse... filthy whore with her damn chlamydia. Cost me a week of antibiotic medicine.
Actually who am I kidding, I'd do it again for two weeks of antibiotic treatments.
The idea that people gain clairvoyance on their deathbeds is nonsense.
The only finance jobs that leave you without a life are entry-level banking jobs. For the first few years, you're unskilled labor that adds value (mostly) via time/grunt work.
I agree that the real things that matter are the human connections that we make.
On a side note, everywhere but the US has embraced this palliative care shit. That is how you lower health expenses. Most heath related costs are incurred during the final parts of life. Maybe if we embraced this sort of reflective spirituality and dying with family and friends we could offer healthcare to more people without racking up a bone crushing debt.
Just a thought.
I'll put it more bluntly, people need to get over their fear of death, it directly and indirectly leads to so many problems. This is the major financial problem it leads us to. People wanting to live, or for their loved ones to live, strapped to machines that cost tons and tons of money to operate, just so they can not technically be dead for an extra few days. Fucking awful.
I read somewhere recently that people tend to actually live both longer and happier in their final days in hospices when compared to being strapped to machines in hospitals. Maybe a little dignity goes a long way.
Love life more than you fear death. Respect it, but don't live in fear of it. You're going to die anyway, make the most of the time here.
I agree. People should embrace death, not fear it. As an atheist, I see death as just an eternity of sleep. Nothing to be scared of, provided that it's natural and not painful.
I love it how WSO turns every discussion, however removed from macroeconomics, to one about sovereign austerity... if the IMF was a hedge fund, you guys would all be partners....
There's no time to regret things when you go out in a flame of glory. That's why I'm going to die just like I came in, screaming, bald and covered in goo.
We have a ton of palliative services in the US. Its people's belief that a) no matter what is wrong, doctors, or worse Jebus, can fix it for them and b) that any life is better than death (which is clearly horseshit) that prevents them from using it.
sometimes i wonder if ill regret not having worked harder. i just coast through life sin problemas. seems to work very well for me, but i do sometimes wonder what wuda happened had i gone to a target school, taken that IB job and worked 100 hrs a week, etc etc.
o ya, i wuda been $400k in student loans, working way too much, stuck in a tiny apt in NYC, not be travelling the world, and def not be as awesome as i am now.
How the hell do you rack up $400k in student loans on an IB track?
if i ever find out of i have 6 months to live, i am going to ammo up and go down the list of sex offenders in the area and kill every child rapist on there.
.
on the fear of death, i loved the words by Hemingway in Midnight in Paris
Isn't number 1 also what Steve Jobs said?
This thread depressed the shit out of me. I feel awful in my gut right now. Maybe this is the wrong forum, but you guys are probably relatively like-minded in some ways, so if any of you have conquered a real fear of death let me know how.
How all of you can just stare death in the face like that (albeit as young men) is beyond me. "Eternal sleep" as Brady said? That is anything but comforting...like Rebecca Black said, "I don't want this weekend (life) to end!"
Perhaps the best short term solution is to block out the thought as much as possible, but I'm afraid when I finally do stop and think about it it'll be 100x worse and put me into a serious depression.
To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris:
Being dead isn't the big deal because: a.) if there's nothing after life, you won't know you're dead and thus won't be upset about it; b.) if there's an afterlife, great!
It's really more the feeling of leaving a fun party and knowing that it's still going on without you that sucks. But, ya know what, there isn't anything we can do about it anyway, so we might as well enjoy it while we're here.
You are either sleeping eternally or rocking out in a heavenly utopia. Either way you can't do a damn thing to stop it. Enjoy your life and enjoy your friendships. Try and leave things a little better than when you were born.
Oh, and vote Republican or you will burn in hell.
ha, I like that, king and ANT.
Guess I'll party hard while I'm here. Was going to study the BIWS all evening, fuck that. I'm going to study a little then go out.
living your life to satisfy yourself on your deathbed is a pretty retarded idea seeing that you spent 1-2months on your death bed and c. 70years living life.
I'm not scared of dying. I'm scared of not making $.
I could die today and wouldn't regret shit.... and there is still a ton of stuff i'd like to do. The problem is the mindset that runs permeates through people when they are about to die, not what they actually did during theiur lives.
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