
Regrets of the Dying - vijaydev
http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
======
F_J_H
I have already posted this once in a similar thread, but thought I would post
it again as it quite relevant to the article and others who have not seen it
before may appreciate it:

"Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges:

If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more
errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more
foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be
less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more
sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places
where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would
have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of
his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water
bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel
lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the
beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would
take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If
I had another life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.

~~~
wslh
Sounds nice, but it's important to note that it's apocryphe, it was not
written by JLB.

A note from Martin Hadis:
[http://www.internetaleph.com/detail/showdetail.asp?objtype=4...](http://www.internetaleph.com/detail/showdetail.asp?objtype=4&objid=4&langid=en&pid=74)

~~~
hugh3
It should be some kind of Law:

Anything written in Spanish will eventually be attributed to Jorge Luis
Borges.

(Except maybe Don Quixote, which as we all know is the work of Pierre Menard.)

------
hbt
I read the book "meditations" from Marcus Aurelius recently. It's very
interesting to note that the human condition hasn't changed that much. Here
are a couple of quotes related to the article.

1\. "How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or
does or thinks." -- Marcus Aurelius

2\. Work will always be considered a waste of time when you think about it
later if you don't enjoy doing it now.

Who thinks those hours debugging + testing X piece of software in language Y
about 10 years ago which is now replaced by code Z wasn't a waste of time? It
was fun then though.

3\. "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you,
but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that
judgment now." \-- Marcus Aurelius

4\. No comments. True friends are amazing human beings to have around. Often
better than your own blood.

5\. "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts:
therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions
unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. " -- Marcus

We could all use some philosophy, it helps when things go to shit.

~~~
hugh3
_"How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or
does or thinks." -- Marcus Aurelius_

Y'see, this is the problem I have with Marcus Aurelius. It must have been
relatively easy for _him_ to not care what other people think. For those of us
who aren't the goddamn Emperor of Rome, well, we occasionally have the sorts
of practical issues which didn't affect him so much.

I was also recently reading some of the letters of Seneca. He spends nine
tenths of his time talking about how awesome it is to be a stoic emotionally
detached from material posessions as well as the ups and downs of life, but
the remainder letting slip his day-to-day concerns overseeing his vast
estates, huge wealth and thousands of slaves.

Are there any good stoic philosophers who weren't fabulously wealthy?

~~~
CoreDumpling
Though he predates Stoicism by a bit, I think Diogenes of Sinope [1] did a
fine job of practicing what he preached. Also, while Stoicism might be
difficult to accept through the conduit of someone like Marcus Aurelius, he
was strongly influenced by and frequently quoted Epictetus [2], who also fits
your criteria to a tee.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus>

------
neilk
Sometimes I think that I might be one of the few people who will be on my
deathbed, regretting not working harder.

When I look back on my life, it's mostly been unfinished projects, or good
ideas that didn't get far.

I've always been told how much _potential_ I have, and I even feel this in
myself. But so far, there's not a lot to show for it. Sometimes I've spent
years not doing much of anything except looking at sunsets, walking in parks,
reading books, and being creative, and all the things that are supposed to
make life wonderful. These idle years weren't all a bowl of cherries (mostly
it was due to depression) but it still wasn't so different from the slow sort
of lifestyle exalted above. And I still find it lacking.

We only have a limited time here, and in our age, individuals have
extraordinary leverage. Isn't that also a reason to try as hard as we can to
make some kind of dent in the universe? If I forgo a few sunsets, but make a
thousand people's lives better, did I really do it wrong?

When it comes to regrets, the literary image that stays with me comes from
Charles Dickens' _A Christmas Carol_. This part is usually omitted from
popularizations and films. Marley's ghost has delivered the warning about the
three spirits, but also shows him a vision of spirits wandering the earth:

 _The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless
haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none
were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had
been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous
iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The
misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
human matters, and had lost the power for ever._

~~~
SiVal
Well said, neilk. I always have mixed feelings when reading about the wisdom
of people who are dying. I don't doubt that they feel the way they say they
feel at that point, but are their judgments relevant to how they WOULD HAVE
felt for years, not weeks, back when they still had years to live? On their
deathbeds, when they value family so much more than career, they wish they'd
spent more time on the former, less on the latter. But if they had actually
lived that way for decades, would they have been any happier? Can we know for
sure? They might be romanticizing the time they could have spent with family,
but didn't, and underestimating the discouragment of living with the
professional consequences of "spending less time at the office," while
successful coworkers were spending more.

I suspect that the real key to success in life over all is to carefully
identify your priorities and to deliberately, passionately, and courageously
pursue them, rather than being governed by accident, convenience, fear, and
inertia.

~~~
neilk
Well, I wasn't talking about a career. I was talking about working harder, and
having achievements you could be proud of. That's not the same thing.

I think it's been established beyond doubt that a successful career _doesn't_
make you happy. Plenty of researchers have looked into the correlation of
income to happiness, and above the poverty line it's pretty flat.

~~~
mikhailfranco
Reminds me of the BBC Radio 4 'Desert Island Discs' interview with Sir Tom
Blundell. It was several years ago, and I don't have a transcript, so this is
a vaguely remembered paraphrase ...

He was researching protein structure in an X-ray crystallography lab and was
working long evenings and nights. Eventually his wife gave him the ultimatum
to make a choice between his work and her. He chose work and got a divorce. He
said he was incredibly relieved to be free of the guilt he felt neglecting her
while he worked at the lab, and threw himself into the research with a new-
found energy and determination. Shortly afterwards he he discovered the
structure of insulin.

There are billions of mediocre marriages in the world, but structure of
insulin is only discovered once.

In retrospect, he sounded like he thought he made the right decision to spend
less time with his family.

------
sheena
I wonder if there is a way to bring realizations born of other people's
experiences home in any meaningful way. I sometimes think about what advice
I'd give my 17-year-old self if I had to attend college again, but I admit
that the younger me likely wouldn't have listened. It's hard to know what to
value in the moment, and I find it's equally hard to absorb what others with
the benefit of hindsight tell you. I'd bet that none of these expressed
regrets really surprises any of us, but chances are we'll all have the same
ones on our own deathbeds -- despite knowing better.

~~~
lachyg
What advice would you have given your 17 year old self? (I am 16)

~~~
thaumaturgy
Here are some things I wish I understood when I was 17:

1\. Being "unique" doesn't mean trying to alienate everyone else. Many of the
people that you meet, and who seem simple or uninteresting, have a great story
to tell or a special talent to share. So, trying to "fit in" a little bit and
getting to know lots of people doesn't make you a lesser person in any way; it
makes you greater for the broader perspectives that you will get.

2\. As you begin to learn to find something of value in each person, also
begin to learn to find something of value in the work that you do. Stubbornly
refusing to do homework only hurts you, and proves nothing. This is the best
time to begin developing the discipline required to focus completely on a
mundane task and finish it as quickly as possible; if you can get the hang of
that, then there's no job you can't master.

3\. Do not talk yourself out of saying "hi" to that girl. You're missing out
on a lot of fun, it won't hurt you, and the sooner you start practicing this
the sooner you'll get the hang of it.

4\. Make sure you maintain a healthy balance in your life. Working all day
behind a computer and then going home to play around with a computer until the
early morning will eventually cause you to burn out and completely disrupt
everything you have in order to feel healthy again. Even though you enjoy it
now, you're better off leaving some time for learning how to work on a car, or
running around outside, or socializing; then you'll have something to do when
you can't stand working on a computer anymore.

5\. Most of all, spend less time on the internet. In 10 years you'll barely
remember any of the message boards that are so important to you now; you'll
have trouble remembering many of the people that you associate with online;
you won't be certain exactly what it was you did with all your time online. If
you want to socialize, meet some people in person; if you want to learn
something, start with a book; if you want to waste some time, try another
hobby; and if you want pornography, try finding a girl to say hi to instead.

6\. Oh, and finally: you probably won't heed any of this advice anyway,
because you're irrationally stubborn, determined to do things your own way,
and still struggling with some bad habits that you refuse to get help with.
That's OK. You'll be fine so long as you keep pushing yourself a little bit
every day.

I'm sure none of these apply to you, but I wished I knew them 15 years ago.
:-)

~~~
binarybits
"In 10 years you'll barely remember any of the message boards that are so
important to you now."

I couldn't disagree more. The majority of my closest friendships and
professional opportunities have come from time spent on the Internet. I'm
probably an extreme case, but people "on the Internet" are no more real than
people you meet face-to-face, and online friendships can and do turn into
real-life friendships, and vice versa.

~~~
lachyg
Agreed, I met a few of my business partners on the 'net. Then proceeded to
meet them in London earlier this year. They're great friends now, and I'm sure
they'll continue to be for the rest of my life.

------
tomwalker
I have met quite a few patients that were undergoing palliative care for their
treatments and I heard a lot of the same.

One recurring theme I found was that ministers and priests always ended up
doubting or renouncing their faith. It was terribly depressing.

Whenever I think back it always reminds me to spend more time with my family-
they provide the best support in these sort of situations and close families
always had a happier "vibe".

~~~
shadowsun7
_One recurring theme I found was that ministers and priests always ended up
doubting or renouncing their faith. It was terribly depressing._

I'm curious: why?

~~~
tomwalker
I really don't know. They never gave a reason. Loneliness was common for those
poor guys.

~~~
all
This is very, very true. Ministers of most all religions are among the
loneliest of the lot. Because confidence is crucial to their social function
and because people breed politics (i.e., backstabbing), many feel they cannot
have friends in their congregations/parishes/communities/whatever. Too often
they are right.

~~~
ww520
Would it be helpful to create a forum or community site specifically for them?
Then they can vent and bond anonymously, or with people far away who don't
have conflict of interests with them.

------
harscoat
People

That's what a Geriatric doctor, I consider a friend, who saw many "humans"
dying told friends & I once at a dinner I remember. When I said most of us
when dying will regret things they did not achieve like a book, a business, a
house, works of art, scientific discovery, something that we could be proud
of. He said to me "hey, you may know better in your 30s, in my experience most
people before they die they regret not things but other people; not having
spend more time with their children, not having forgiven their father or
mother, not having told them how much they loved them before they died...". I
personally like that post but I think my doctor friend would say: "too many
words".

I now have a little son and I do a startup, in both cases, I make effort to
remember what this doctor friend told me, "one word,

People"

------
chriseidhof
This reminds me of Jeff Bezos's framework: optimize your life for minimal
regret. Very inspiring.

[http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/uncategorized-
blog/liv...](http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog/uncategorized-blog/live-
with-no-regrets-jeff-bezos/)

~~~
tlb
It's better to optimize your life around what you value now, not a prediction
of what your old, dying self might value differently. Because your prediction
is unlikely to be right, and you're probably making better decisions now than
while facing death.

------
exit
> _All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on
> the treadmill of a work existence._

the problem i find is that your choice is between 150% (employed) or 0%
(unemployable).

~~~
shadowsun7
70 years from now you may think differently. I'm not saying that as a bad
thing, or in a condescending way, merely to point out that sometimes, we truly
cannot know what looking death in the face feels like. And that our thoughts
on various things - all sorts of things - change when we finally do.

~~~
exit
i'm not saying this is how things should be. i'm just pointing out that it
seems no one has the option to "work less". our only options seem to be
between killing ourselves working to remain "employable", or simply becoming
unemployed.

~~~
jules
This is not true at all. Many and perhaps most people I know don't work full
time. My parents for example work 3-4 days a week.

~~~
all
What do they do?

~~~
jules
Dad works at a "hogeschool" as teacher among other things and mom is a doctor.

------
danieldk
I try to keep the basic premise of Zen close to heart: 'live in the moment'.
Not only in the narrow sense of being present in the moment, but also in a
wider sense.

It's easy to live with sentiments such as: if I work just a bit more, I can
have a nice house in fifteen years. Once I can buy a Mac Pro, I will really be
productive.

The cold fact is that life can end quickly. The present moment is the only
thing we have, so treasure it ;). Of course, that's not always easy...

------
Emore
I've thought about this a lot. Say you really manage to live in such a way
that you won't have these regrets. Wouldn't you, then, regret not pursuing a
career? Or the thrill and excitement of climbing a ladder (hey, just putting
it out there)? Not to mention that the "fulfilling your own dreams" regret is
probably impossible to avoid by merely fulfilling your dreams.

I would love to hear the regrets of people that have lived a life in such a
way that they don't have these modern regrets.

~~~
juliob
Yes, you're right, assuming that fulfilling your dream is not compatible with
pursuing your career.

After working two post-college years at a top software company, I quit the
cushy life and lived life by trial and error and my plans only went as far as
3 months ahead. 11 years later I still don't know which country I'll be living
or working out of within the next 3 months.

Yes I did start to regret losing out on some of the structure, discipline, and
optimal professional self-improvement path of living the life that society
hands you. I feel I have the experience of a guy 6 years my junior. On the
other hand, I know more about myself than my peers because I tried so many
things and tested myself under so many different environments.

Looking back, I don't think I would have made a different choice but I would
spent my leaves (from the typical path) a lot more directed and focused. I
think I could have learned about life and myself in a quicker way just by
doing things instead of just being.

But of course, learning to be -- and breaking automatic habits of action -- is
the key to being happy as well.

As you guessed, there is no right or best answer.

But again, if your career and your dreams are one and the same, then this one
dimension could be resolved.

------
maigret
The article is a bit too short in my point of view, I wish there were a bit
more stories told in. It feels a bit cold in that form.

This is a very good article nonetheless. I think this is a good goal to be
conscious of what is missing in one's life for feeling satisfied at the end.
If you are aware of the trade-off you do and why, it's probably easier to be
OK with it at the end.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Interesting - this was submitted nearly four weeks ago, and yet garnered no
comments at all, and only one up-vote:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570865>

~~~
n8agrin
pg linked to it on Twitter yesterday which likely drew a lot of attention.
twitter.com/paulg

~~~
ptn
He probably even read it here and then twitted it.

~~~
vijaydev
yeah probably. His tweet came about an hour after this submission :)

------
mkelly
I like this article. I wish, however, that it didn't include the little
interpretations in the second half of each section. I think it would be more
powerful, and honest, if they weren't there.

------
abalashov
I guess it remains to be seen conclusively when I fall terminally ill or get
close to death of old age, but in my mind, it is not possible to have a life
without some kind of theoretical regrets. Every choice you make to spend every
moment a certain way is necessarily mutually exclusive with spending it any
other way, and there are only so many moments and so many things one can
realistically do.

I'm quite positively certain that if asked to reflect on all the things I
regret near death, and truly chose to entertain the question from that angle,
then I would find something to regret no matter how I lived my life until that
point. There will always be could-have-beens, should-have-beens, what-ifs and
maybe-if-I-did/didn'ts.

Furthermore, in a practical sense, life is an economically bounded experience;
life in a world with finite resources, finite time, and within a society of
other people always entails strong elements of concession, compromise and
accommodation. You cannot lead a purely hedonistic life unconstrained by
material or political limitations. What you do will always be subsumed to some
extent by exigencies you would rather not have, by the needs and wants of
others, by nature, and various forces you can't control. So, I don't think
it's intelligible to implore people to "lead a life without regrets."

I'm not saying there isn't wisdom in being aware that life is short, and you
only get one, and that there are some things you will wish you had done if
your life ends up being a lot shorter than you expected. However, it seems to
me that an important part of finding peace is acknowledging and coming to
terms with the objective facts of the human condition and the inescapable
psychological truths that accompany them. Seeing your existence as it is and
not as it could hypothetically be is an important pillar of peace and comfort
for the soul. The reality is, you will always have "regrets": there are always
infinite alternate possibilities for any conditional branch, there are
practically infinite variables.

"Live a life you won't regret" is the wrong way to look out at the world and
your relationship to it. A more constructive approach may be to say, "Lead a
good life," whatever that means to you. It is not logically equivalent to
"lead a life about which you will never wish something could have been
different."

Edit: Also, it is important to emphasise the critical distinction between a)
regretting that you had not done something differently, in that all it would
take for you to not regret it is to have made a different - and equally
accessible - choice, versus b) regretting that you could not have done
something differently, in the sense that you wish circumstances or conditions
had been such as to make possible or make more likely that you could have made
- and actually carried out - a different choice.

~~~
stan_rogers
It's not so much being satisfied that every choice you made in life is the
best one, but, being satisfied with who you are today (on the whole), coming
to understand that who you are is the sum of every choice you've made, every
relationship you've entered into, and every experience you have had. Change
anything in that chain, and you are somebody different.

As long as you haven't lived the life of Methuselah (nearly a thousand
freakin' years to get on with something, and the only thing posterity has to
say about him is that he had sons and daughters before he died[1]), as long as
you've tried to participate in your own life and haven't found a reason to
loathe who you are, then there is no room, really, for the what-ifs or the
coulda-shouldas.

[1] I'm no Bible literalist (or believer, for that matter), but I think that
was the point the writer was trying to get across as a moral lesson.

~~~
strait
Yep, be satisfied with who you are today (on the whole) and who you are on the
day of your death. Recogonize now, the urge to speculate on what more you
could have done as just another urge. Naturally, when one is dying and their
own life is becoming scare in their own estimation, their longing for
meaningful activities is going to be heightened. I'd argue that the more one
has experienced in life, the more intense this longing will be. How many times
can one go around and say final farewells to cherished friends? Never enough!

I try to read a lot of fiction, old and new, but I know that when I'm close to
death, I'm liable to be choked up about those dozen or so books that I never
got around to reading. Someone who doesn't like fiction will probably not
think at all about what they never got around to think about reading. We're
all that way about our own set of cares and don't cares, so none of the wishes
and regrets are ever cosmically meaningful anyway.

------
sz
Interesting how the answers to "what will I wish I'd have done now in 5
years?" and "what will I wish I'd have done now on my deathbed?" can be so
different.

The second one is better, I think. With the first, you never stop.

~~~
hugh3
This brings up an interesting point: should we _trust_ people about their
deathbed regrets?

I mean, let's face it. You're lying there, surrounded by your relatives, and
everybody is sad. You're going to want to say something life-affirming about
how you wish you'd spent more time with your children or smelled more flowers
or listened to the wind blowing through the trees or something like that...
something that sounds appropriate for the situation, and something that people
will think well of you for.

You _don't_ want to say "I wish I'd married a different woman" or "I should
have stopped after my first two children" or "If only I'd gone to law school",
even if those are your deepest regrets. There's a certain amount of social
pressure to only talk about pleasant life-affirming things, so that's pretty
much what you're going to get.

~~~
sz
On the other hand, if someone has been lying all their life, if they're ever
going to tell the truth, it's going to be on their deathbed.

This idea actually appears in our legal system: in court, hearsay (Person X
testifies that they heard Person Y say something about Event Z) is usually
rejected because there's no way of knowing whether Person Y was lying, even if
Person X was truthful. But there are exceptions for circumstances under which
Person Y is considered likely to be telling the truth. One of them is a dying
declaration; statements made on a deathbed.

------
hopeless
After a potentially fatal car accident, a councillor suggested Victor Frankl's
book "Man's search for meaning". I'd highly recommend it.

On the other hand, I'm not convinced that anyone who hasn't faced death can
really understand life. You can talk to people and they'll nod and agree but
they won't understand. My suggestion for living a fulfilling life would be to
nearly die every 5-10 years. It's the only thing powerful enough to remind you
what is important about life.

------
petercooper
I'm with the "never have any regrets" crowd. The biggest regret should be
wasting your valuable time unproductively regretting stuff when you don't have
long left to live and could, instead, be preparing yourself and enjoying the
company of those close to you.

------
jessriedel
A more scientific approach, which compliments the OP well:

[http://www.fz-juelich.de/inb/inb-
mut/innsbruck/sommer06/pdf/...](http://www.fz-juelich.de/inb/inb-
mut/innsbruck/sommer06/pdf/unterlagen/experience.pdf)

In particular, see table 1, page 4.

------
jolan
No one on their death bed ever said "I wish I'd spent more time alone with my
computer." - D. Bunten (creator of M.U.L.E.)

~~~
ww520
Wait until the computing generation goes to death bed.

~~~
Detrus
If the generation never spends a lot of time outside, they won't know what
they missed and won't feel regrets.

------
smallegan
Surprisingly watching more TV and playing more MMORPG's didn't make the
list...hmm

~~~
c00p3r
MMORPGs are for losers. For a winner life itself is a the best RPG.

btw, posting things to HN (and especially down-voting) are just a different
kind of RPG. ^_^

TV is watching someone else's play.

