I’ve spent some time the last couple of days going through my daily journals. I wanted to get a sense of the sequence of some events that have happened in my life, mostly in my forties. My forties were tumultuous times for me. I think they are a time of tumult for a lot of people. In your twenties, you are still figuring things out, and that fact is expected, and accepted by you, and by the grace of everyone else. In your thirties, you are in go-go-go/do-do-do mode with very little time for real and honest introspection. It is typically in your forties when the cracks start to show, and the internal questions start banging in your head, such as are you happy with the directions your life is going in? Are you living a genuinely authentic life, true to your own intrinsic values?
It was in my forties, that my husband and I started to take things in a different direction for ourselves and for our family which was truer to what we really wanted in life. In truth, we were sort of forced into it. The dramatic moment of becoming “the poster kids for the Great Recession” (against our strong, and stubborn wills at the time) helped facilitate that movement. And what once seemed like the worst thing that ever happened to us, became the best catalyst to project us towards being more real and conscious about our choices for our family and for ourselves. (The Universe knows what it is doing.) When I read over the journals (I only started consciously journaling on a daily basis in 2013, when I was 42), I am grateful to my younger self. I admire her. She had to make some really hard decisions about where to live, and how to live, and who to remove from her life for the health and the protection of herself and her family. I also feel some pangs for her, because she had a hard time letting stuff go. She did the tough stuff, but she lived in too much fear and worry and doubt and even sometimes sadness, on a daily basis. And the interesting thing is, that everything that my forties-self worried about, has long since resolved itself. In fact, some of the events that were jotted in my journal, I don’t even remember happening.
I think that I decided to look up the sequence of events in my life in the past decade because a couple of weekends ago, my husband and I were sitting in a hospital room with an extended family member who is quite ill. Despite having trouble speaking, she wanted to talk. She talked and talked. And we listened. And what she talked about, were the different experiences that had happened throughout her life. It was like a highlight reel of the truly impactful, proud, emotional, interesting events which had happened in her own life. I think this reminded me that I don’t want to wait until I am facing down my own death, to reflect on my life. I want to do spot checks. I want to end on a high note with very few regrets, and so it is important for me to do the course corrections along the way.
In my Twitter feed this morning, Moral Philosophy, asked their readers, “What are some common regrets people have when they get old?” Interestingly, although there were many people answering the question, most of the answers were repetitive. One reader suggested everyone read the book, Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. Bronnie Ware is an Australian palliative nurse who has spent a lot of time caring for patients in their dying days. This is what Bronnie Ware says are the biggest regrets of the dying, and most of the many answers from Moral Philosophy’s question of today, fell into these categories:
The 5 Greatest Regrets of the Dying are:
- 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 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
“I wish I had let myself be happier.” From going through my journals of the last decade of my life, it was certainly full of happy moments. But many times, I allowed those moments to be clouded with fear, worry, guilt, rumination and righteous anger. When I am 62, I hope to look back at these next ten years of my journals, and I hope to be as proud as I am of my younger self, for her bravery, and for her honesty and for her authenticity, but I also hope that another thing that stands out to me, from these reflections of my future journals written throughout my fifties decade, is the sense of serenity, peace, faith and surrender. My deepest self inherently knows that the Universe knows what it is doing. It is time to shed all of the fearful parts of myself who want to doubt, and who want to try to control the uncontrollable. When I read my journals of the future, I hope only to read the words of my truest, deepest, eternal, peaceful, loving Self.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.