Mind-boggling information, or is it? It does confirm what I have believed for some time. Bronnie Ware, a nurse working with the dying has identified and written a book entitled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The number one regret was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other’s expected of me”. See the other's www.inspirationandchai.com
Yes, we are dominated by the barrage of expectations both overt and covert first from our parents, then from our school experiences. Oh yes and then there are the expectations of the church, the media our supervisors, bosses and on and on. How can we know what a life true to ourselves would be like? How do we separate out what is us, the real us and what we have had inculcated by other’s expectations? Do we want to wait until we are dying to come to that realization that we never did live our own life or can we change the way we live much sooner in our life span?
The answer for me is that I want to feel I am at least approximating my true life as early in life as possible. I want to be me. This is not at all easy. In fact it takes a good deal of insight, awareness and yes, COURAGE. The first step is to become aware of the inconsistencies in our life. We realize we feel like a fish out of water, we feel stressed all of the time or just look forward to the end of the workday more than anything. Just maybe we are in the wrong career. Our parents were teachers and expected us to be as well so we are making them happy but what about us? Perhaps we are a leader in our church but in our secret life we aren’t even a Believer. There are many other examples of ways we live someone else’s dreams rather than our own.
These kinds of inconsistencies in our lives carry the potential for disaster. Stress, mental illness, physical illness and of course unhappiness may well follow apparently to our death beds.
The second step is to know and identify how and what you want to change. That is a challenge in itself for some of us. Others know clearly they don’t want to teach they want to be a fishing guide. Or they want to play golf on Sunday mornings. Some of us may have to experiment to find that thing that makes us happy, that resonates with our true being. A good dose of self awareness and thoughtfulness may be in order prior to knowing what changes we want and need.
Then comes the courage part. You may disappoint your parents, your pastor or whoever provided you with their expectations to live by. There may be serious fall-out. You will get pressure to not change. You knew that would happen. That’s why you were living their life. But you want to be happy. You don’t want to lie in your death bed and murmur to someone at your bedside, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other’s expected of me.”
Stan the Man
