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Garuda
12-09-2011, 01:06 PM
An interesting article: what regrets do people have on their deathbed?

The top 5 are:


I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn't work so hard.
I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.


Read the full article here: http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

southerncross
12-10-2011, 02:16 AM
Seems courage is a major theme. #4 is a tough one for many of us. We naturally drift as we grow and that is tough, but as we grow we change and often that creates barriers too. Sadly, I have lost friends that way that could not adjust to my changes. One totally turned th eir back on me, the other just wants to argue. Sad, we'd known each other so long. But as #1 says, we must remain true to ourselves. To not do so would be the ultimate betrayal.
I just wish they would love me for who I am.

Thymamai
12-10-2011, 08:27 PM
Friends are people you happen to care about, and that you find personal growth and gain in seeing succeed.

But friendship lasts only as far as your respect for them was deep, and is often taken too much like a professional agreement, "scratch my back I'll scratch yours". When your friendship really is something different than that altogether.
But that is the reason why, I think, it is so difficult to be true to self and still be loved for it. Everyone is in survival mode; interpersonal insight remains shallow.

calikid
12-10-2011, 08:46 PM
Very interesting topic.

Guess I could related the few things related to me by personal friends shortly before they passed.
But since I have not been in that situation, I cannot say "this is my personal regret".
Seems that in the back of my mind (human coping mechanism?), there is always tomorrow to resolve any regrets/issues.... until this isn't a tomorrow.

noot
12-10-2011, 09:07 PM
The result is death regardless. Regrets are nothing more than little plaints in the void. Oh.. And people don't "pass," they croak. And rightly so. The vast majority of lives are a waste of protoplasm at the end of the day.

calikid
12-10-2011, 09:19 PM
Regardless of the meaning of life; other people's regrets can be taken as a cautionary tale for those of us with time left in this earthly realm.

noot
12-10-2011, 09:26 PM
Hahahahaa. OK.

Redbone
12-21-2011, 07:51 PM
My biggest regret? That I got it all wrong and I could've had 72 virgins!:das

noot
12-21-2011, 07:58 PM
Does the human condition require regret? Or might it not be the case that regret is nothing more than a trivial conceit? I wish this/ I wish that... Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up faster.

newyorklily
12-21-2011, 08:11 PM
I have some regrets but not many. If I hadn't lived my life the way I did, I would not have learned what I did. Life is a classroom. Not learning from the lessons here (and not growing from them) would be my biggest regrets of all.

noot
12-21-2011, 08:36 PM
In the end, regret is based in shame and guilt. These are matters discussed ad infinitum by the existentialist philosophers from Kiekegaard to Nietzsche to Sartre. I don't for a minute believe that a serious discussion is in the offing here. Just sayin...

Chris
12-21-2011, 08:55 PM
In the end, regret is based in shame and guilt. These are matters discussed ad infinitum by the existentialist philosophers from Kiekegaard to Nietzsche to Sartre. I don't for a minute believe that a serious discussion is in the offing here. Just sayin...

Regret is more than just an existentialist concept dealing with shame and guilt. Pity that is all you see.

The clad in black, oh woe is me and humanity, pessimistic slackers of that era are today's Unibomber and schoolhouse assassin. Kinda doubt that is what the Supreme Being intended. But then again we are free-willed and quite capable of learning from others mistakes.

Regret can take the form of not following a particular path when a choice was offered, wishing you could have done more with your life, wishing you could have done more to help someone else's life, etc. Read up on Francis of Assisi for starters. Regrets learned during life can lead to a change in path later in life.

noot
12-21-2011, 09:14 PM
Edith speaks for me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRuLFR91e4

noot
12-21-2011, 09:21 PM
More Piaf! It's so unfortunate that France means nothing but french fries to a guy like you. hahahah More on regret...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feNVUwQA8U&feature=related

rdunk
12-21-2011, 11:59 PM
I have some regrets but not many. If I hadn't lived my life the way I did, I would not have learned what I did. Life is a classroom. Not learning from the lessons here (and not growing from them) would be my biggest regrets of all.
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Hi lily! I think you summed this bit on "regrets" pretty well. As all of us have grown through whatever years, we had to make a lot of decisions about a lot of different things, and it will be that way until the end, however that comes about. And all of us have that ump-teen years as hind-sight, to look back, and to mull over, and "second guess" ourselves as to whether we did it right, or, should have done it differently. Irregardless,, as you say, we learned from what we did, but there is one "fly in this ointment" when one starts to thinking of past should've, could've, would've' "being equal to regrets". And that "fly in the ointment" is..................... we have "no true hindsight" on how our lives might have been different, through living out the "different decisions.

We just can't know what personal problems and disasters we might have missed, by making every decision we actually made, along the way!! No "regrets" for me!!

Dragonfire
12-22-2011, 12:11 AM
Some of it it comes down to coulda/shoulda/woulda, wish I had or wish I didn't. Hind sight is always 20/15.

But we all learn from it. Hopefully :rolleyes:

Even you Toon, whether you want to admit or not.

But again, some people just don't want to. :wall: