I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. Failing that, I hope you just survived it all.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re mid-January and by now you would\u2019ve come to realise that the \u201cNew Year \u2013 New You\u201d thing is probably not going to happen.<\/p>\n
Not magically anyway.<\/p>\n
Your (unrealistic) New Year\u2019s resolutions of running 10 km every day, never shouting at the kids (yeah right. You forgot it\u2019s school holidays, didn\u2019t you?), not arguing with your partner, never overeating, or drinking alcohol or whatever have now been broken.<\/p>\n
A new year but \u2013 bummer \u2013 the old dysfunctions remain.<\/p>\n
For Christmas I got a number of interesting gifts. Among them was a book from a very good friend of mine. It\u2019s called: \u201cThe Top Five Regrets of the Dying\u201d.<\/p>\n
A somewhat morbid Christmas present you may be thinking and my friend, it must be said, was almost apologetic when giving it to me. I, however, was thrilled because I thought such a book is the opposite of morbid. It is life-affirming.<\/p>\n
If we can learn from the wisdom that seems to grip some people as they\u2019re dying and use it to enrich our lives and get our priorities straight wouldn\u2019t it lead to a better life and \u2013 ultimately \u2013to fewer regrets when it\u2019s our turn to die?<\/p>\n
I realise that I\u2019m not in the majority here but I think the standard way of dealing with our mortality \u2013 avoidance in its many various dysfunctional forms –\u00a0 is a morbid way of dealing with life. That is, while we\u2019re busy avoiding the fact that we\u2019re limited beings, life passes us by. As the write of Lolita-fame Nabokov said: \u201cThe cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at about forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n According to Bronnie Ware, the author of \u201cThe Top Five Regrets of the Dying\u201d the main wishes of the dying, as they looked back over their lives were:<\/p>\n My advice: print this list out and put it on your fridge and let it be your New Year\u2019s resolutions.<\/p>\n Forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year. Failing that, I hope you just survived it all. We\u2019re mid-January and by now you would\u2019ve come to realise that the \u201cNew Year \u2013 New You\u201d thing is probably not … Continue reading \n