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Top five regrets of the dying
Brian
Detroit, MI Moderator
This is fascinating. A palliative care nurse recorded many of her patients' regrets as their lives ebbed, and summarized the top five regrets most people have as they reflect on their lives.
The five:
The five:
- 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.
8
Comments
They wish they had lived life, as I think we're all meant to.
Let's not insult these people by compartmentalising, ok?
I was just making a comment on how all of those regrets can be worked on through the dhamma practice(mindfulness is the way to truly live life!).. of course there are other ways as well im sure.
Mindfulness is the way to the Deathless (Nibbana); unmindfulness is the way to Death. Those who are mindful do not die; those who are not mindful are as if already dead.
We are Buddha. We should live accordingly and shine.
I wonder how many monastics wish they had not worked so hard. Or that they had spent more time with friends and family. Or that they had enjoyed more worldly pleasures.
That would make an interesting survey.
I'm with @federica -- let's go easy on the inferences. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or Frisbeetariainism might all be good assistants, but maybe a cup of coffee or a shot of bourbon would have made a more practical and satisfying good sense.
“We do not stop playing because we are old; we grow old because we stop playing. There are only four secrets to staying young, being happy, and achieving success. You have to laugh and find humor every day.
You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die.
We have so many people walking around who are dead and don’t even know it!There is a huge difference between growing older and growing up.
If you are nineteen years old and lie in bed for one full year and don’t do one productive thing, you will turn twenty years old.
If I am eighty-seven years old and stay in bed for a year and never do anything I will turn eighty-eight.
Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any talent or ability. The idea is to grow up by always finding opportunity in change.
Have no regrets.
The elderly usually don’t have regrets for what we did, but rather for things we did not do. The only people who fear death are those with regrets.”
http://growingbolder.com/media/health/aging/never-leave-the-playground-793777.html
It is ironic how there are regrets of not being happy, when you need to get rid of regrets to be happy.
Regret of the living:
"MEDITATE, Ananda, DO NOT DELAY, or else you will regret it later. This is our instruction to you."
"I would have made love more and I would have taken more psychedelics" Tim Leary
"As he attends inappropriately in this way, one of six kinds of view arises in him:.......This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress."
MN2
Food for thought