Top five regrets of the dying, with tangents

In an article that seems to probably be posted every 6 months or so, title Top Five Regrets of the Dying, there is this list of things that people regret about their lives, after they have lived much longer than we have:

  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 hadn’t worked 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.

There’s more detail in the article about what these mean exactly.  But they can be reduced even further, I think.  

#1, #3, and #5 are about self-expression, and the fact that we let fears prevent us from doing what we really (in the back of our heads, maybe only in hindsight sometimes) want.

Fear is an easy thing to regret. Maybe in addition to fear there’s a bit of… lack of urgency about all of life that never really pushes us to step out of the routine for long enough to think about what really should be done.

#2 and #4 speak more directly about the important but not urgent things that replaced the important but not as urgent valuable things in our lives.  They both imply that relationships (family, friends) should trump work and the rat race. 

I did a funny thing today and went through all of my “most loved technologies/apps/etc” and tried to reduce each one to the personal value that it helps enhance.

All of them fell into 3 categories:

  • Ability to connect/have relationships (Twitter, Facebook, Email, iPhone, etc)
  • Ability to learn (Wikipedia, TED Talks, Radiolab, Quantified Self)
  • Ability to self-express (Instagram, Tumblr, cameras, blogs, SOPA reactions, etc)

Lots of overlap between things too.  Twitter and Facebook help with all 3.

Technology is at a point in history where it is helping us connect, learn, and self-express in magnified ways that are unprecedented. It’s doing good work. Of course, it’s fighting against work that it helped create in the past (consolidation of power, corruption, lack of accountability). I realized that my love of technology wouldn’t have been nearly as strong back 100 years ago when it was all about creating super powers.  Kevin Kelly’s book, “What Technology Wants” is still with me as I remind myself that it’s not that technology is intrinsically good or evil, it’s just going in a direction.  Just like many of us go through selfish adolescent phases, or jaded and cynical phases, it doesn’t mean that maturing is a good or evil force in human development.

It makes me think that the top 5 regrets of the dying of the past generation are already protected against in our generation.  Our regrets will be different.  But what will they be?

Is working too hard so bad if you’re doing it for things you believe in, and with courage?

Will any of us (in the Twitter-Facebook-universe feel like we were not given enough opportunities to express our feelings, or stay in touch with our friends?

And aren’t we constantly doing everything in our power to be as happy as we possibly can be?  Perhaps not being fully informed about how to do so successfully…

I propose as one of my top 5 regrets, when I’m dying…

Not caring enough about health. Not doing everything I can to live to 100, or beyond… til the day when our entire world merges into the technium as a single mind.  Yeah, our lives are gonna get weird quick, quicker every day. It’s gonna suck to have to exit stage left halfway through the hockey puck.

11 Notes/ Hide

  1. pamelab said: Regrets at the end of life are the times when we let misplaced fear rule our decisions.
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