Are deathbed regrets overrated?
Maybe we worry about the wrong parts of life
In working on this book I’ve heard people mention their fear of deathbed regrets many times. The theory works like this:
Imagine yourself in the future in your death bed
Now look back on your life and list your regrets
Make goals now so those regrets disappear
I’m a fan of planning so on the surface this all seems like a good idea. And most people seem to know about it, even though it doesn’t seem to have a singular source.
But my opinion position is this activity is overrated. Here’s why.
There are more positive ways to live than in fear of regrets. I’m always suspicious of negative motivations. Can’t we be motivated by excitement? Love? Hope? Being afraid of a feeling is dangerous. Instead make a list of good things you want to feel late in life.
You might just end up with different regrets. How do we really know how we’ll feel when we’re dying? Even if we do this task, it might just create other kinds of regrets that we didn’t predict. Trying to avoid any kind of negative feeling is foolish. Our brains are good at finding things to complain about.
Many people die quickly and not in some extended Hollywood death scene. So the fear of “deathbed worries” might be misplaced. If you get hit by a death bus one day your regrets will die without you having to review them. And even if we do have regrets in our deathbed, we won’t experience them for long because we’re dying! Why worry about the last day of a trip if you’re having fun every day before it?
So the spirit of this kind of thinking, which I take to mean “use your imagination to live better” is fine. It’s the negative, fear based parts of it that I think are problematic.
What do you think? Does of fear of regret help motivate you?
I recently heard a quote I really liked: if a person isn't happy, it doesn't matter whether they live to 100, because they'll just be unhappy at 100. I think the same idea applies to the negativity you're describing here. Dwelling on regrets is its own kind of negativity, and while it might motivate some people, for me at least it doesn't actually feel good or change much.
The way I see it, most regrets come from looking back, and they fall into two buckets: things I could have controlled and things I couldn't. If it was something within my control, I can just do better next time, there’s no need to keep regretting it. If it was out of my control, then regretting it won't fix anything anyway. Either way, I'd rather not dwell on it too much.
I suspect the purpose of written (non media) time travel stories to have people get on with life and not try to mentally change things: There's a reason such travel is called "messing with the past."
When President Harry Truman was asked if he had thought about his past, and imagined taking different paths he said, "No, what would be the point?"
And when some reporter asked Harry if his father was a failure, he snapped, "He raised a son to be president of the United States, and that is success enough for any man!"
As for choosing what to regret, I think, you just never know.