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Regrets of the Dying<\/em><\/p>\n The Top Five Regrets of the Dying<\/em>\u00a0was a bestselling book by a palliative care nurse who spent a lot of time with patients as they were passing away. I\u2019m not going to recommend it as a book; the writing isn\u2019t the best and it gets kind of repetitious, but the idea sparked an interest in me on taking an end-of-life perspective, which seems like one of the more accurate lenses through which to view things big picture. Here I\u2019ll go through each regret with commentary on how it interrelates with the gospel and gospel living.<\/p>\n I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.<\/em><\/p>\n This one is common in leaving Mormonism narratives, and it definitely has something to it. I\u2019m an orthodox member, but for adults who simply don\u2019t believe but are ensconced in heavily Latter-day Saint circles I totally get it. I do feel like the pressures are much less now with the great opening up of the world with the Internet. Patent non-believers typically don\u2019t go on missions anymore, for example, when that wasn\u2019t unheard of, say, 20 years ago. For believers, a purely distilled deathbed faith, stripped of any concern whatsoever of what Bishop, President, or Elder so and so thinks of us seems like the ideal to strive for in our day to day walk with God. However, the single-minded focus on pursuing a life \u201ctrue to one\u2019s self,\u201d consequences be damned, can also cause a lot of pain. One of the icons of 2nd wave feminism, Alice Walker, had a stormy relationship with her icon-of-3rd-wave-feminism daughter because she neglected her as a child during Alice Walker\u2019s obsessive (ultimately successful) quest to become known as a world-class thought leader. The famous 19th-century artist Paul Gaugin left his family in dire straits because he felt his muse was calling him to go be an artist in Tahiti. Karl Marx\u2019s family literally died from neglect because he refused to get an actual job. And those were the thinkers that were successful. I imagine the vast majority of these cases lead to a few forgotten intellectual productions and destroyed lives. (The movie The Meyerowitz Stories is a good example of this.) In some cases your Muse can take a hike; living a self-centered life clashes with the Savior\u2019s simple truth that he that will lose himself will find himself.<\/p>\n I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.<\/em><\/p>\n I suspect this will be less of a deathbed regret for my generation. I have many issues with millennials, but maybe it\u2019s not so much that we\u2019re lazy, but rather that we\u2019ve figured this one out? (As long as we don\u2019t expect the benefits of working hard, feeling entitled to those while not actually putting in the work drives me bonkers).<\/p>\n I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. <\/em><\/p>\n I guess this one kind of depends on what those feelings are. Absolute honesty is one of those things that sounds nice on paper, but I have an acquaintance that doesn\u2019t seem to have a filter and his relationships are awkward since everybody walks on pins and needles around him. (Also, nobody can accuse our immediate former US President of not having the \u201ccourage\u2019 to express his feelings, with arguable results).<\/p>\n I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.<\/em><\/p>\n Facebook, for all its criticisms, is a game changer here. I have meaningfully substantive \u201cFacebook relationships\u201d with people I\u2019ve only met once or twice in real time, and birthdays and other occasions are often nice excuses to reach out and touch bases for relationships that would otherwise have withered on the vine of geographic distance and time.<\/p>\n I wish that I had let myself be happier. <\/em><\/p>\n This one is also qualified. I liked President Hinckley\u2019s emphasis on life being meant to be enjoyed and Uchtdorf\u2019s emphasis on the meaningfulness of his non-religion related pursuits. Still, I also take C.S. Lewis\u2019 point (I can\u2019t remember where exactly) that some wicked, manipulative people do sincerely have fun and enjoyment in life. We like to tell ourselves that they just need a big hug and are really hurting inside, but some people really are wicked and evil and enjoy themselves. Of course, what I suspect she means here is to let go of anxieties and status competitions that get in the way of just enjoying life, and in that sense I can unreservedly endorse this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regrets of the Dying The Top Five Regrets of the Dying\u00a0was a bestselling book by a palliative care nurse who spent a lot of time with patients as they were passing away. I\u2019m not going to recommend it as a book; the writing isn\u2019t the best and it gets kind of repetitious, but the idea sparked an interest in me on taking an end-of-life perspective, which seems like one of the more accurate lenses through which to view things big picture. Here I\u2019ll go through each regret with commentary on how it interrelates with the gospel and gospel living. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This one is common in leaving Mormonism narratives, and it definitely has something to it. I\u2019m an orthodox member, but for adults who simply don\u2019t believe but are ensconced in heavily Latter-day Saint circles I totally get it. I do feel like the pressures are much less now with the great opening up of the world with the Internet. Patent non-believers typically don\u2019t go on missions anymore, for example, when that wasn\u2019t unheard of, say, 20 years ago. For believers, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":45297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/scranney_regrets_of_the_dying_aa55c394-3765-4b1e-a6e1-22ba3150b1eb.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45295"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50214,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45295\/revisions\/50214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}