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Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

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Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#11

Post by GrangalanJr »

panacea wrote: post #2

And sunscreen... don't forget the sunscreen. Flippancy aside, there's nothing that makes these 'end of life' desires any more meaningful than 'prime of life' impulses.

Those who have lived longer do have one advantage of perspective: they have years of experience pursuing many "prime of life" impulses / goals / desires, and are therefore able to look back on and judge the (negative and positive) results of such pursuit. Of course, the experiences and feelings of one person or a handful of people cannot generalize to everyone, but I definitely think there is some value in considering the assessments of those who have "been there, done that."

Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#12

Post by coolgeek »

_Lemon_ wrote: post #3

Interesting read, which also says I'm doing most things wrong. Original (kind of disingenuous to just copy / paste the whole thing with a link at the end): http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

Which was already posted 278 days ago...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643239

Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#14

Post by anonymous »

When my father was dying there was only 3 things he wanted to do: 1. Get up from bed because he was uncomfortable. But had to lay back down because he was too weak. 2. Use the bathroom, becase he didn't want to use a diaper 3. Waiting for his mother to come get him. Towards the end, #3 is all he wanted. There were no regrets. Initally he was worried about his wife, my mother, but we told him everything is going to fine.

Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#15

Post by michaeldhopkins »

gentschev wrote: post #7
panacea wrote: post #2

And sunscreen... don't forget the sunscreen. Flippancy aside, there's nothing that makes these 'end of life' desires any more meaningful than 'prime of life' impulses.

Agreed. If anything, you won't have to worry about those death-bed regrets for long. Also, this type of thing always seems skewed to people who worked a lot. What do the under-achievers regret?

According to the article, the #1 regret is that dreams were not pursued which suggests a lot of hard work. Taken together with #2 this suggests a startup founder might regret not working efficiently enough.

Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#19

Post by ido »

[deleted] wrote: post #16

[deleted]

Just because you worked harder working for yourself doesn't mean "live a life true to myself" is diametrically opposed to "I wish I didn’t work so hard"...

At the most I would say they are inversely correlated in your particular case.

Re: Top 5 Regrets People Make on their Deathbed

#20

Post by junklight »

Of course these are from a selected environment - those dying with time to reflect. I imagine there is a whole other class of regret the: I wish I hadn't done that/put my in there/opened that door/said that etc. etc. moments before death.

But yes, far too many people live their lives as though they are going to get some sort of prize at the end: "Yes you suffered silently all your life about some thing you could have changed - here's a gold star". The only person measuring your life is you. The people around you will on the whole appreciate you more if you are fulfilling your self. Obviously there are those that won't - family or otherwise. You need to get rid of them - you don't get a prize for putting up with their crap either.

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