This HN poster has a single post to HN. This one. Posted an hour ago.
This is a post to a Tumblr with a single post. This one. Posted an hour ago.
This is ripped off, word-for-word, from the original at inspirationandchai.com. It's linked, yes, but there's absolutely no reason for this Tumblr to exist, and the fact that this HN poster has no submission history besides this one suggests this is some kind of Googlejuicing.
It's a nice story and all, but this is the wrong way to go about getting it on HN, if it even belongs here to begin with (which, probably, it doesn't).
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 <body part> 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.
"Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."
Take it from an old guy, pay attention to this. I've buried both inlaws and my father since late January this year. When you lose your health, you also lose the little things in life from a very real perspective. You can't hang with your friends any more. Your free time evaporates because of all of the doctor visits. You may need help getting there. Also, the idea of spontaneous activity becomes a memory, because you have to plan yours around medication and appointments. And, of course, that affects the plans of those who love you (although they will deny it).
And health can pretty much only be taken care of by working hard. I bet the people who could afford a palliative nurse at home sure as hell would regret it more if they couldn't afford her because they worked less.
I watched someone close to me die over several months. Her only regret seemed to be that she was dying.
I don't believe this list of top 5 regrets is based on research at all. I suspect that it is mostly only in TV, movies, or novels where a person on their deathbed contemplates things they would have done differently. Usually the impending death overwhelms all other thoughts.
I'm more inclined to trust the anecdotes of a palliative care nurse with years and years of intimate experience with the dying than your single anecdote from a single perimortem friend.
The post made plain it was based on anecdata, not research. Did you read the preamble or just skip right to the numbered list?
I think this also depends on age and mental state. For instance, my grandmother who was old and frail, but had a happy life. In her last few years she often mentioned that she was ready to die. She'd also talk often about the past.
If death is unexpected, and cuts through all plans and expectations without regards, it's hard to reconcile with death.
Such posts often remind me how important it is to live in the moment (and how hard to attain ;)).
I'd like to say that I'm surprised by the lack of introspection and thoughtfulness that I'm reading in these comments, but instead I'm just disappointed.
Perhaps most people here are just too busy living in the hubristic stage of their life to imagine that there's anything to be gained by occasionally listening to the wisdom of those who've gone before us.
Why is the framing of looking back on your life from your deathbed seen as more valid than any other point in your life? Are there good arguments for its validity?
However, I think an argument is that experience and knowledge about your own life is at a maximum (absent degenerative diseases, etc) just as it ends, and therefore taking advice from the person you are on your deathbed is taking advice from someone who knows more than you about everything, and has precisely the same goals for you as you do.
I would imagine because when you're on your deathbed, it's too late to change anything. It brings a little clarity and highlights what is really important vs the stuff that seemed important at the time but turned out to a waste of time.
The end of life perspective still suffers from the same problem as middle of life -- they have no way of knowing what the outcome would have been if they had done things the other way. They might be on their deathbed saying "I wish I'd worked harder and not been broke all my life." There are always going to be paths not taken.
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.
isn't there a kind of statistical / informational bias here?
you can simplify the trade-off between work and pleasure as one where you need to work enough, earlier in life, to survive for some some unpredictable amount, later in life.
so when you're making the decision about how much to work, and how much to play, you have incomplete data - you don't know when you will die.
but when you are dying, you do have that data. with hindsight, you can decide exactly how much work was necessary. then it's easy to say "damn, i still have x dollars left that the kids will enjoy instead of me". but only with the hindsight you don't have when you're making the decision.
now you can argue that what this means is that we should shift the balance beforehand. so that less people are regretting some money in the bank, and more are dying from neglect / starvation / lack of care because they don't have money late in life. but if i had a choice, i think i'd rather have worked a little too much, than face that.
so this regret seems like a natural, predictable outcome, based on the lack of information (about the time of our own deaths) and asymmetry of outcomes that we face.
[of course, you can argue that (1) the above is a very simple model and (2) we can still adapt - for example, to try find more interesting work - while alive. i am not arguing with those points, only pointing out regret may be the optimal solution to at least one simple model]
Also the pithy wisdom of people who can wish all they want without consequences. Say anything, especially if it sounds profound.
Perhaps the author figured out that most folks think of the same pseudo-profound things when they're dying. I'd kind of like to hear the list of unique thoughts.
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."
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.
I can tell you that it's not just those on their death bed who face these regrets, but the families surrounding them as well. My own experiences have taught me that my real moments of happiness come from enjoying my family time. Work provides some satisfaction: those little victories nailing a project, or scoring a big contract, but it only lasts until the next one. A job well done on a project hardly can compare the moments you capture with your spouse or your children.
I think from some of the comments, it could be that you just haven't reach the point in your life that this difference becomes apparent. I would have never guessed before having children that I could be so happy -- they are just entirely different emotions. I suspect a lot of folks under hospice care are old enough to recognize this difference, and regret spending their early years trying to earn their way to happiness, and missed their childrens youth.
I think our generations, especially with the work-from-home movements, will be different though. We get to both raise our children and work just as hard -- it's no longer a choice to be made.
I would be far more interested in: Top regrets of generally successful people on their deathbed. I don't read people magazine for life tips, I read HN.
I'm pretty sure #2 about working harder is probably a common regret of successful people. Though it depends on what you define as successful, I assume since this is Hacker News the definition of success here is probably something along the lines of starting a successful business.
I'm not very sure that deathbed regrets are a good indication of how to live, or even of what was truly important in people's lives.
Vaguely related, I used to have days when right before falling asleep I had some regrets about the day, like having wasted time.
Nowadays I tell myself to STFU and just go to sleep, because I know that next morning I'll realize how ridiculous and sentimental these kinds of regrets are.
When you die, there is no next morning. I think and hope that when my time comes, the only regret I have will be that there is no next morning.
Why can't they be opposed? All the regrets don't come from the same person.
Also, there's no rule that says they have to make sense. Regrets that people have on their death-bed are not necessarily imbued with a supernatural clarity.
I'm glad you pointed this out. We all know how easy it is to come up with ambitious New Year resolutions and not stick to them, even though they made complete sense at the time.
People on their death beds say stuff that belongs to the realm of New Year resolutions. It sounds easy to say that you wished you didn't work so hard, but when you get the opportunity to work a bit harder and get a nice cottage close to a lake where you can spend 1 month per year, it seems like working harder for 10 years is a good trade-off.
The point is that there are wonderful parts of life other than cottages on lakes, and while you're working harder for those 10 years you are to some extent missing out on those parts of life, because there are only 24 hours in a day.
While you're focusing on that one month at the cottage, those people on their death beds are reflecting on the other 11.
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.
When you poll opinions of a number of people, the opinions often turn out to be logically incompatible with each other. For example, when you define "popular" opinions as ones that are shared by at least 10% of the population, you can have a situation such as when the opinions that "the government should increase spending on A, B, C" and that "the government should reduce taxes" simultaneously meet the popularity threshold.
I sometimes wonder: Of those people who said they'd work less/be happier/live truer etc how would they feel if they really did get to redo their lives with that ethos? Would they regret different things? Would they wished they'd worked even less, or perhaps work more?
I was expecting something like "I wish I had worked harder" as opposed to what I found in the article - "I wish I didn’t work so hard". In a way, that’s actually relieving. Perhaps, I am too alive to think that way.
Most people do not spend a lot of time doing what they are passionate about; e.g. even if you like programming, buckling down for a solid 5 hours to get that widget to work across all four browsers isn't particularly satisfying. Absent economic imperatives, one probably wouldn't look back on a lifetime of that (or worse) as being optimal.
I wonder what the average generation is of these people. I would expect most to be Baby Boomers, which would make sense for a lot of these regrets as their lives were shaped by a time when most had to start working in their early teens and to not show their emotions, at least for the men. It would be interesting to compare to a later generations dying regrets.
Most people, I imagine, don't really know what they should be regretting. For instance, it is possible one could regret not keeping up with old friends, while in reality it would have been a detriment to happiness. Humans are known to look at the past with rose colored glasses.
1. Most of this advice contradicts itself.
2. The 6th regret should be 'I wish I didn't have to resort to stealing other people's content to get to the top of HN'
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