Transience - Five Regrets of the Dying

Here’s a short note as I pack my bags for my trip to Japan tomorrow while reflecting on recent conversations related to the transience we can do nothing about.

When we truly understand that time is finite, I think the question changes from “What can I accomplish?” to “How should I spend my remaining time?”

I opened one of my favorite books, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: 

tran·​sient \ tran-shent; tran-zhənt
1. not lasting a long time: SHORT-LIVED [~ optimism]
2. passing through a place with only a brief stay [~ visitors]
Synonyms: Transitory, Passing, Momentary, Fleeting 

When I contemplate transience, I often go back to Bonnie Ware. In her book, Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the five regrets she identified from her years caring for people near the end of life were:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
   This one was the most common regret. People realized how many dreams and choices they had abandoned because of expectations, convention, fear, or trying to please others.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
   Especially common among the men she cared for, they regretted missing family activities, companionship, relationships, and the ordinary pleasures of life because work consumed so much of their time.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
   To avoid conflict or keep the peace, people suppressed their feelings. In doing so, they sometimes settled for superficial relationships, or carried resentment for years.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
   When I shared this book with my dad a couple years before he passed, he told me, “This is the big one for me.” Ware says, near death people rediscovered how important old friendships had been. Careers, families, geography, and everyday busyness had allowed meaningful relationships to fade.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
   Ware observed that many people eventually realized happiness was partly a choice. They had remained trapped in familiar habits, routines, fears, and concern about what others thought.

I think these five regrets are worth remembering as we grow older.

Conclusion
Nothing is forever – jobs, health, relationships, country club memberships. What we do with that knowledge helps shapes us.

Life can bring great joy. But part of the deal is it also includes sorrow, grief, and loss. For survival, we need to channel ourselves in the direction of goodness, joy, love, friendship, adventure, and nature.

Watching friends and family die brings us face to face with our own mortality, a sense that time is so precious because life is so transient.

Our hard work, our pursuit of excellence, can suck the life out of us, leaving an emptiness inside. Let’s remember that we don’t get to cash in on our hard work at the end. We have to spend it as we go. We have to live life.

In Japan, I'll be visiting Tokyo - Kiso Valley, Nagano - Kyoto - Osaka.

I'll be living life. 

All the best,
Peter