Hi all,
A couple of months ago, I read a pair of short articles about regret in the face of mortality. The first was written by Bronnie Ware, a longtime palliative care worker. The topic was the five most commonly expressed regrets she heard from her patients. I will link to the article below- see the endnotes- in the meantime, here is a quick summary of the five that she described:
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.
The second came from Paul Graham's online essay collection (which I referenced in a very recent post). It is a response to Ware's article in which he shares his response designed to lessen the possibility of having these regrets for himself.
As with Ware's piece, I will link to the article below- but here is a
quick summary of his response. Graham inverted each regret into a command
that he can read as a daily reminder of how to live in order to diminish
the chances of him having these regrets himself at some time in the future:
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
Putting the two together...
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
-> Don't ignore your dreams
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
-> Don't work too much
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
-> Say what you think
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
-> Cultivate friendships
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
-> Be happy
I like a lot of what Paul Graham writes. Like him, I have a to-do list that I read each morning to remind myself of things I might otherwise forget. And on paper the concept of a life without regret sounded great. I mean, where do I sign up, right?
I did not go with him on this one initially, though. I'll admit it- no matter how well such an approach worked for someone else, I thought it would not work for me. Why?
I like a lot of what Paul Graham writes. Like him, I have a to-do list that I read each morning to remind myself of things I might otherwise forget. And on paper the concept of a life without regret sounded great. I mean, where do I sign up, right?
I did not go with him on this one initially, though. I'll admit it- no matter how well such an approach worked for someone else, I thought it would not work for me. Why?
One possible reason is that I just did not believe in the stated idea- that the types of
mistakes that lead to these regrets later could be minimized or even avoided
altogether with a change in approach right now.
In a way, I suppose I felt this way because there is nothing new on that list for me. (Be happy, duh.)
In a way, I suppose I felt this way because there is nothing new on that list for me. (Be happy, duh.)
And yet, despite knowing these things, I've managed to repeat the behavior that
leads to these same regrets. I'm at the point where I believe they are
impossible to avoid.
Consider, for example, how I felt about many of these things at eighteen. I recall a vague feeling that I spent too much time 'studying' things like the periodic table. I know that I valued sound logic over messy expressions of emotion or feeling. I graduated with too many great friends to count- yet over those same years I had stopped speaking to many other equally great friends.
Consider, for example, how I felt about many of these things at eighteen. I recall a vague feeling that I spent too much time 'studying' things like the periodic table. I know that I valued sound logic over messy expressions of emotion or feeling. I graduated with too many great friends to count- yet over those same years I had stopped speaking to many other equally great friends.
Knowing those things as I left home for four years of college undoubtedly shaped my decisions as an undergrad. I did not, for example, take summer jobs solely to accumulate spending money- I just focused on maintaining a bank balance that would afford me the ability to move anywhere in the country for a post-college job. And yet, thinking back, college was a lot of the same regardless of my heightened self-awareness.
I worked too hard. I recently re-read a paper I wrote as a senior that might as well have been written in Latin given how much I comprehended it now (or any language other than English, though I suppose it was written in English and I still didn't get it, so who knows).
I knew how
macroeconomic models for things like the labor market worked and could explain
the mechanics as intelligently as anyone. But if my GPA was based on
understanding how the people living in the 'unemployed' part of the graph felt
about their situation, I would have immediately flunked out.
The best advice I
got while choosing a college was that, regardless of where I went, I should relax as I would probably
make four or five really great lifelong friends (very reassuring
advice at the time). And it proved undoubtedly true in these years since I graduated. But I guess I missed
the follow up memo that I would lose touch with four or five equally great friends, too,
over the course of those same years.
I'm not sure how much differently I could have behaved to change these things. I suppose I could have done better in reaching out and staying in touch with specific friends but I also did stay in touch with many other friends. It would be nice to have not worked so hard at times but employers do tend to react poorly when employees adopt an 'as I feel like it' policy to their work efforts. I can look back at many times where I do wish I expressed my emotions better but I know from experience that sometimes words detonate on impact, too.
Figuring out how to navigate this balance of considering both present and future in decision making is one of my biggest ongoing challenges. Graham's list is his own personal way of addressing the concept. I suppose it must work for him as he has so kindly shared it with his readers.
Like I said earlier, I agree with his general idea but feel it definitely will not work for me. Still, given the stakes, there is no sense in not trying. So, let's see where this goes.
But I quickly realized that I can't go forward and just apply his list as my own. There are probably lots of little reasons as to why this was.
I'm not sure how much differently I could have behaved to change these things. I suppose I could have done better in reaching out and staying in touch with specific friends but I also did stay in touch with many other friends. It would be nice to have not worked so hard at times but employers do tend to react poorly when employees adopt an 'as I feel like it' policy to their work efforts. I can look back at many times where I do wish I expressed my emotions better but I know from experience that sometimes words detonate on impact, too.
Figuring out how to navigate this balance of considering both present and future in decision making is one of my biggest ongoing challenges. Graham's list is his own personal way of addressing the concept. I suppose it must work for him as he has so kindly shared it with his readers.
Like I said earlier, I agree with his general idea but feel it definitely will not work for me. Still, given the stakes, there is no sense in not trying. So, let's see where this goes.
But I quickly realized that I can't go forward and just apply his list as my own. There are probably lots of little reasons as to why this was.
Ultimately, I think just one big reason trumped all the others- I didn't know how
to actually carry out his instructions:
Don't ignore your dreams...don't work too much...say what you think...cultivate friendships...be happy...
Yup, right now I have no idea how to properly do any of these. I can feel my way through on some of these, of course, and play a hunch or two on the others. But I have nothing concrete.
Don't ignore your dreams...don't work too much...say what you think...cultivate friendships...be happy...
Yup, right now I have no idea how to properly do any of these. I can feel my way through on some of these, of course, and play a hunch or two on the others. But I have nothing concrete.
My response to his last comment led me to my own approach for an initial version of this list. If I use a list like the one Graham puts into his article, I am guilty of pretending to be someone else. This works, sometimes- imitation is a good way to practice something new- but in terms of happiness, it follows that your happiness is being defined on someone else's terms.
So, for me to be happy, a key point of reference is to limit pretending. This is about as final of a statement as I can imagine it being. And in this case, to say that I will read those commands each morning and act on them would be the comments of a pretender.
However, I do feel pretty good about using that idea as a rule of thumb against the fifth theme above. With a little more refinement, I might even be able to turn it into a 'to-do' item in the style Graham uses.
As I worked through the rest of the list, I found myself at various points in terms of progress. In some cases, I could identify a basic mechanism that I could lean on in pursuit of this idea about minimizing regrets. In other cases, I could barely restate the idea in my own words.
But there is not much I can do about any of that right now. All we can do is try to be our best self as often as possible. In the cases where the best is not good enough, we just have to resolve to try and do a little better next time. Hopefully, I find that over time I too can reach a point of clarity that comes through in Graham's essay on the topic of these regrets by focusing on doing a litter better each time I get the chance.
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Thanks as always for reading (hope no one regrets the time spent here today). I'll be back on Monday, hopefully. If it is not up by 6am, please accept my apologies, enjoy the holiday, and come back on Wednesday.
Only endnotes today. The first one is my list of five 'reference points' that I came up with to try and track my progress against these five themes from Ware's article. I ranked them in order of how far along I feel toward knowing how to best approach them. I also included Graham's idea alongside it for easy reference.
The next endnotes are links to Ware and Graham's original articles.
Thanks again.
Tim
Endnote #1- my initial crack at a list...
1. I feel pretty good about this one- I think I have it figured out:
*I wish that I had let myself be happier. (Be happy.)
-> Pretending to be someone else defines your happiness on someone else’s terms
2. This one needs a little refining but I think I am on the right track:
*I wish I didn’t work so hard. (Don't work too much.)
-> Cut out everything you can leave behind so you are not income dependent
3. Still a little hit or miss here- each friend is different, which is great but also makes 'staying in touch' a fluid concept:
*I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. (Cultivate friendships.)
-> Stay in touch with friends and reach back out to those who reach out to you
4. I suspect it is not a question of courage, more of 'know-how' that I've mostly ignored over the years:
*I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. (Say what you think.)
-> Learn to express your feelings
5. Not a clue here- best I can do is keep in mind a basic fact about most dreams:
*I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. (Don't ignore your dreams.)
-> The moment you lose your health, you lose the ability to follow your dreams
Endnote #2- the two articles I reference in the above...
