Man asked hospice nurses what patients final regrets were and some of them are heartbreaking
One day we're all going to die and when that comes I hope you'll be able to look back on your life and think you had a good innings, all things considered.
Of course there are likely to be regrets, pretty much nobody gets through the great adventure that is life without wishing they'd had the chance to do some things differently.
At the very least you would like to hope that when you think back your thoughts are not too overshadowed by regrets and wishes that you'd done everything differently.
You only get one go around on the great ride of life and when it's time to shuffle off you can be placed in a contemplative mood.
Advert
According to a hospice nurse a lot of people will experience 'visioning', where they can clearly see people from their memories with an incredibly vivid level of detail.
Author and speaker Matthew Kelly once talked to a number of hospice nurses to ask them what people spoke about on their deathbeds when they discussed regrets, and some of the answers were heartbreaking.
Many of the responses were as you'd expect, wishes that they'd 'spent more time with the people I love' and 'hadn't spent so much time working'.
It sounds like lots of people wished they'd made different choices in their lives and spent their tragically finite time differently.
One of the responses was that someone wished they'd 'quit my job and found something I enjoyed doing', while another lamented that they'd not 'stayed in touch with old friends'.
While many people wish they'd spent more time with those close to them, others lamented letting important figures in their life drift away.
Then, of course, there were the people who took a more introspective look and had wished they'd not just acted differently with others but themselves too.
Another common regret was 'I wish I'd had the courage to be myself', and others regretted that they'd not 'learned to express my feeling more'.
Some wished that they'd not spent so much time worrying.
"I wish I hadn't spent so much time worrying about things that never happened," was one voiced regret, while another said they 'wish I had cared less about what other people thought'.
In the end you've got one life so you might as well live yours, and if you live your life making accommodations for what everyone else thinks then you'll likely not be living your own life.
Joe Harker