A woman named Bronnie Ware who spent years working in palliative care recently wrote a post about her experiences working with people in the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. In it she discussed the top five regrets that she saw her patients express. Take a look at the list:
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 didn’t work 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.”
Read the whole post for a lot of additional insights, including which regret was the most common, as well as which statement was made by every single male patient she ever nursed. [That link is temporarily unavailable at the time of this writing; if it remains down, you can see a cached version here.]
As I looked over the list, I realized that I was once on track to have many—if not all—of these regrets at the end of my life. Now that I’m Catholic, I doubt that any of them will be serious concerns; the risk of me lying on my deathbed consumed with regret has been drastically diminished. This is certainly not to say that my life is perfect now, but the difference is that I at least know what is true now. When you think about it, every one of these regrets ties into some lie of the devil:
When we say, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me,” it was because we listened to the devil say, “You can’t be happy without other people’s approval.”
When we say, “I wish I didn’t work so hard,” it was because we listened to the devil say, “You’ll find your life’s fulfillment in your career.”
When we say, “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings,” it was because we listened to the devil say, “God won’t help you to stand up for what’s good and true.”
When we say, “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends,” it was because we listened to the devil say, “You don’t have time to spend time with the people you love—just look at all those important things on your to-do list!”
When we say, “I wish that I had let myself be happier,” it was because we listened to the devil say, “Don’t bother to seek God’s true purpose for your life—you’re obliged to do what people expect of you.”
Reviewing this list crystallizes for me something I’ve thought since my conversion: that the extent to which you end up with a life full of regrets is directly proportional to the extent to which you seek happiness in the world. As I and so many other people have found, you’ll never find lasting fulfillment outside of God. As I continue to think about these regrets of the dying, they strike me as a tragic illustration of St. Augustine’s famous quote: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
Comments
Post a Comment
excellent. thanks for sharing this article, and your commentary rings so true.
What an important post. I think the idea of “momento mori” keeping death before our eyes, is about more than avoiding sin. It is about becoming the fulness of who God has made us to be. These 5 regrets are very helpful to know about. I would very much like to avoid them all.
Jennifer, I see (and enjoy) your column among the others on the NC Register blog that I receive on my Kindle, so I don’t usually have a chance to comment…but for this one I wanted to make the effort to pull the article up on my work computer and leave you a warm appreciative note for this reference to Bronnie Ware’s original post as well as your own comments upon it. This is an especially important topic for pondering during the quiet time that most of us enjoy the week after Christmas. And it’s wonderful food for thought for the new year. Let’s make 2012 our year of good health, not only physical but also mental, emotional and (most important of all) spiritual. Blessings to you…
But alas, in spite of our regrets, all is not lost. For all we need to do is call on Jesus and His Mercy. It is the lifeline for the Dying. For even though we have many regrets and our bodies are broken by life like the ocean batters a shell, Jesus continues in pursuit of the pearl inside.
http://www.thedivinemercy.org/mercysunday/christswords.php
Jennifer, a good friend of mine died unexpectedly last thursday and was buried today. As I awoke and read this article that you wrote it was as if Mark was speaking through you. Thank you for being open to the Holy Spirit to use you and the gifts he has given you!
Nathan, thank you so much for your kind words! Your friend Mark will be in my prayers.
Wow. Thanks for this.
This is such a great reminder of how to live, thank you! There is nothing like facing death to prioritize things. I had a near-death experience a little over a year ago and it had a profound impact on how I view almost everything. I was a spiritual person all my life but until that time never gave much meaningful thought to the end of this temporal life. Crazy, I know! That quote from St. Augustine is one of my favorites!
Another excellent post, Jennifer.
Thanks.
Thank you Catholic for your most insightful comment, lest we forget there is always hope in God’s mercy and his love all is not lost. Be courageous were ever the road of life has led you, you’re still standing make that stand NOW! have faith, he is with us, ALWAYS!***All things are possible with God*** I Believe, don’t you?
Jennifer
Jennifer, this is so beautiful, thank you. I really do believe that “the rat race” is the product of a tired, disillusioned culture that has lost it’s way. We make bad choices, thinking we are just trying to get to some earthly “promised land”, where we can start making better choices, but we lose our identity in the process. Thank you for not being afraid to say “the Devil”. Thank you for bringing up DEATH. Facing death is a very good thing; it dusts off all of the fake veneers the world tries to fool us with.
I am reminded of one of those apparitions in the last century where Our Lady sat and wept over her children working all seven days of the week, pushing God to the periphery of their lives. We have to ask ourselves, *Did they really want to sweat, and labor all seven days of the week?* I’m sure they (with some infernal help) had convinced themselves that they had no choice.
Imagine what would happen if instead of “Occupy Wall Street”, everyone simply stopped lighting their own candle to mammon, decided once and for all to live a spiritually enriching plan of life that they could live AND DIE with and said “NO!” to the rat race.
Anyone else notice how each of these five ends obstruct the rest, leaving us with not even what we most decide to want? If these temptations are not the work of the Devil, they are certainly indistinguishable from diabolical anti-genius.
Very interesting. One regret that I have noticed that older people who are reflecting back on their life (not necessarily dying) say in addition to these is that they wished they would have had more children.
Had 4; wished we had had 6
Jennifer, usually enjoy your work, so I apologize in advance for the negative vibe during Advent, but… I was instantly struck by the self-centered-ness of this list.
1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” (Sounds like a certain powerful lobby that we are now fighting over marriage, if you catch my drift.) How about the courage to live a life true to God? Isn’t the biggest problem our society faces the cult of ME? And as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said many years ago, we suffer from ‘a poverty of low expectations.’
2. “I wish I didn’t work so hard.” “at the things that didn’t matter, but harder at the things (passing on The Faith?) that did.”
3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.” Yes we need to express our love much more often, but most of us live by “feeling” way too much! (Wish I could find the article from NOR of several years ago about “thinking vs. feeling”.) My understanding of protestant faith is that they are based on ‘feeling’ where Catholic faith is oh so much more!
4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” Granted.
5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.” Many, I’m sure, have trouble accepting God’s love, so I’ll apply the statement that way. But I don’t think that is how it was implied. How about ‘wish I had made more people happy’ or ‘shared God’s love with more people’ or ‘spent more time with my family.’
Not saying that I am accomplishing any of this! But I recognize the need to live for God, with my family, and try. God bless all this Advent- make your bucket list Christ-centered, not pop-psych or self centered.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-top-5-regrets-of-the-dying/#ixzz1gdERTxEL
@Larry, Amen brother1
Excellent article, Jennifer. Since I’ve come back to the Catholic Church, I no longer really care about “happiness”. I think it’s overrated and probably the cause of so much misery and divorce. No one can be in a “happy” state all the time but you can have “joy”. Happiness is not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit - it’s “Joy”. I now want to do God’s will and have “joy” in my heart from knowing that I am doing the best I can to please Him. I fail a lot but I still have the joy from knowing that I am trying. I recently read a book about how important it’s to pray for the dying - for these people to repent of their sins and accept God’s mercy before it’s too late. So let us all remember to pray for the dying.
Jennifer Fulwiler: At 2:08 in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zduwusyip8M) we hear a child’s voice say “They call the baby Jesus and they loved him.” I wish I had spent more time calling Jesus and loving Him.
/
Come Lord Jesus, do not delay.
No disrespect to my wife of the last 25 years, but I regret letting the one woman I have thought of and wished I had never let her go back when I was 21 years old. But God made it up to me with this wife I now have. That has been my only regret. I guess I am blessed. I am now 63 years old.
I realize I am late in commenting but I wanted to make two comments; one to Jennifer and one to Oscar Crary regarding his comment. Jennifer my wife and I recognized this void over two years ago in the sick and dying, thus we began The St Nicholas Project (http://www.stnicholasproject.org) Thank you for this article most enlightening. Oscar Crary…your comment is nothing but disrespect for your wife…I am sorry for you and your wife and will pray for both of you.
For those who wish they “hadn’t worked so hard,” if they mean they spent so much time and effort on making money to the point that they neglected their families physically or emotionally, that’s one thing. But striving for advancement and higher pay in one’s career is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.
It’s easy to think that if you hadn’t been working so hard you could have been doing something else you liked better. But, where would you have gotten the money to do it? It costs money to put on a nice family meal, to travel to a favorite destination, to pursue just about any hobby, or to see family members or friends (unless they live within walking distance).
Maybe they could look at it this way: their hard work made it possible for them to have decent medical care/insurance at the end of their lives, or to provide some kind of security for their surviving family, or it enabled them to enjoy life during their retirement years (if they are retired).
With Social Security and traditional pension plans fast going down the drain, people are going to have to work harder than ever throughout their lives to avoid being destitute in their old age. So maybe “working so hard” is NOT something they should regret, unless they took it to an extreme.
May God Bless you Bil. I wish I had never posted to this site. I wish I had never seen this page. You know nothing about me yet you judge me.
You have shown me that I will never again comment to any forum. I will keep my opinion and thoughts for God only.
I tend to agree with larry’s post: this list is remarkably this-worldly, and really lacks a spiritual dimension. Could all the people this woman nursed in their final weeks/days of life have been so lacking in a spiritual side? Were they ALL worldings, regretting the lapse of old friendships but being indifferent to that Friend who alone was true, constant, and faithful to them (even though they have not always returned that constancy)?
On my death bed I hope that all I regret is my past sins and the offense they gave the Lord. All else will fade to insignificance.
Oscar, I think what the person posting was trying to say is that we need to be very careful about yearning relationships from the past. It leads us down a road of temptation to sin well into the future and it is diffcult to overcome. And, I think many people suffer from this trap. I myself do, in my own ways. We trudge very close to breaking the 6th and 9th commandments when doing so. Sounds like you have a good wife, as do I. I needs God’s constant graces to keep me from crossing this line to sin. Much of the time I do, but occasionally I slip and need confession to ask God’s forgiveness and to start over in Grace. Anyway, as someone who is a great sinner, I hope this helps.
God Bless you and Merry Christmas.
http://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/dmmap.htm
My greatest and only regret would be that I offended God and my neighbor through sin. Anything else pales in comparison.
Almost 20 years ago a long-time neighbor died of cancer, only in his mid-50s. I had served his wedding Mass some 25+ years before, his wife having grown up across the street from me. In response to a question about regrets, he said he only knew gratitude for having such a great family (and he did). He had a wonderful wife, great sons, his sweet mother-in-law lived two doors down. Plus he enjoyed the company of our neighbors and church friends. It was sad to say goodbye to him, but with that attitude, you knew he had led a really good life. I hope I have the same approach!
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.