Regret

I have just read an article from the guardian which describes research that a palliative nurse has done regarding the top most common regrets that people have before they die.

It got me thinking, this article, do most people regret things? The thought of knowing that I was in the last 12 weeks of my life scares the hell out of me, I can't possibly imagine what parts of my life, good or bad, would be dug up and bought to the surface when faced with this knowledge. I don't think anyone can predict the feelings that you would experience. The nurse who compiled these 'top 5 regrets', has obviously seen this first hand, and so, after getting over the somewhat insensitive title of her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying [why she had to put the second 'the' in this title, the dying, ugh, I've no idea], let's see what she put up there in her list.

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.

As noted by the author, I think that a number of these regrets actually reflect a different generation to ours. For example, it is interesting that it was pretty much only men who say they wished they hadn't worked so hard. I suppose she is right that the people she works with mostly come from a time where men were traditionally the breadwinners. I wonder if this will be different for our generation; will us women share this regret equally when it comes to the end? Morbid, sorry.

Staying in touch with our friends: easy peasy these days. I doubt it will be such a common regret in the future..although you still have to make a bit of effort, a bit of clicking and typing you know, so maybe given a few years it will not seem so easy after all. I actually think a common regret for our generation will probably be 'I wish facebook had never existed', after reading that 1/3 of divorces...yes that's one third...cite facebook, or the inappropriate use of, as one of the reasons for the spilt.

The regret that I find the saddest, and the one that I can imagine the is most easy to identify with is the wish to have had the courage to express true feelings. I bet there have been times in most of our lives when we have suppressed saying things that we would have liked to, but does the fact that it is a reported common regret mean that we are all a little too afraid of being honest? Two thoughts: 1) This is a British book so is it our natural British reservation that means we don't always say what we think, would this regret be the same in a different country? and 2) I watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy the other day, [bear with me, I am genuinely about to reference Grey's Anatomy, but it did make me think] and a man who had been given a very slim chance of survival, decided that he would send videos of messages to everyone from whom he had kept his feelings secret. He entrusted the sending of these videos to Meridith Grey, who being the meddling so and so that she is, didn't send them. Of course, the man survived the surgery, to be presented with his bag of videos. He decided to send them anyway. The point of this segue is to wonder whether, given this option, would we send the videos? If yes, then why not just say it all now...just a thought.

The final listed regret, I wish that I had let myself be happier, is interesting. Being only 22, I can barely even begin to know what I will be thinking in 60 odd years time, but I'm going to try bloomin hard to make this not one of them. In have found that happiness is a very temperamental emotion, it comes and goes as it pleases. Like cats really. Happiness is like cats. And in my experience with cats, you can try as hard as you want but you cannot control them, they will not come when called but they always come back. I am gonna try damned hard to keep my cat alive right up to my last day!

After making this wonderful analogy, I have just typed it into google, only to find that someone has stolen my idea and made one of those motivational posters of it. I'm going to see it as a good thing and let myself be happy about it.