It’s been rumoured that, when you die, a highlight reel of your life plays in your head. Imagine you’re in that scenario. You’re old and have reached the end of your life. With a sad acceptance, you realise time has come for you to pass over. That reel begins playing and, sure, it’s filled with copious amounts of happy memories, but there’s a few things missing. A few items off the bucket list, emotions not felt to their absolute maximum, and stone-shaped experiences left unturned. You realise the human vessel you’ve lived in has enough power to traverse space, but instead, you meandered along the local river. Of course, it’s worth saying that this doesn’t merely mean seeking out adrenaline and high-octane experiences. To many, a slower life is their space travel, and that is okay.
Let’s boil this down for a second. Think about you when you’re older. What will you regret not doing? Yes, you may look back on an embarrassing faux pas from years gone and wish it never happened, but when you’ve lived the majority of your life, the things you didn’t do will leave a sour taste in your mouth. What’s that saying? It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If you’re not sure, however, then you’ve come to the right place. Here are some suggestions, some things you will regret not doing sooner. All of the points I will discuss are there for you to enrich your life in a multitude or ways, rather than one singular experience (like skydiving, for example), so really think about how you could embark on these fresh ventures.
Invest in relationships
Harvard Business Review conducted a renowned, 80 year long study focusing on happiness. Starting in 1938, they tracked 268 men and their offspring across the course of their lives, providing a detailed insight into what makes people feel happy and fulfilled in the long run. Close relationships, it turns out, contributed most to people’s happiness. Not money or fame. It’s remarkable, really, that despite all of the bells and whistles modern life provides, inter-person connection still remains critical for happiness and fulfilment. We all need each other, and we always will. As Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the study’s director said, “Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
This reminds me of a sad but highly pertinent story. A friend of mine once told me the story of how his grandfather passed away from old age. A few weeks after his death, one of the grandfather’s old friends showed up at the door. He said, “All of my friends have died” with an immense sadness in his weary eyes. It was a friend who had not visited my friend’s grandad in years.
Of course, health plays a part, but the point is clear. Don’t postpone time with family and friends. Nurturing personal connections leads to long-term happiness because, without other people to share life’s riches, it can, over a long period, cause loneliness – of which there is a startling rise. While it’s vital to find comfort in solitude, human beings also rely on shared experience to form bonds and create a sense of togetherness in an otherwise unfair world. Surrounding yourself with different lived experiences and insight helps grow you as a person. If you find you’re outgrowing certain friendships, that can simply mean they are not meant to be your friend forever. People who remain in your life for the long haul are the ones willing to move with your changes while evolving themselves. Above all else, putting time into these core relationships will help you make sense of your place in this world. It helps you feel less alone in this immeasurably large universe and makes life a whole lot more worth living.
Prioritise health early
You don’t prevent a problem by addressing it when at its peak. You can help ease the issue, but prevention? That requires previous intention. By initiating healthy habits from a young age, you are communicating with your future self. Even though psychologically you view your future self as an entirely different person, by taking care of your health while young and in good health, you’re telling your future self, “Hey, I see you.”
For example, I knew someone who was into weightlifting. Five days a week, 52 weeks a year, he was at the gym picking up something heavy, repeatedly. The results showed. His commitment was admirable, until he reached his forties. As he aged, it became harder and harder to maintain the muscle he’d spent years sculpting. His joints started to grow weary of the relentless battering they took. Furious at the lack of rest and diversity of fitness, his body began crying out. He lamented his decisions to exercise his flexibility and stamina. If he had implemented more rest, or perhaps varied forms of working out such as yoga or even martial arts, perhaps his body would be better equipped for the strains of age.
By prioritising your health early, you are boosting your longevity. Even if you won’t feel the benefits too much now, the work you put in today will make your future a time to flourish, not falter.
Take career risks
I have seen what feels like countless films where the protagonist is miserable, working a soulless job while pining for a long-lost passion. It’s nearly always something creative – writing and painting are common ones. These characters appear so frequently because they represent a widespread reality. Many people regret playing their career safe. Of course, a lot of people may be forced into taking roles rather than choosing a specific career path. For those of you who have the opportunity to take a risk, do it before you can’t. Hedge your bets. Gamble on yourself! When you implicitly trust your ability to do something, that’s your gut talking. Those that listen may make mistakes, but they definitely won’t feel the regret of not trying something new.
Travel and new experiences
When you think back to your childhood, what do you see? Core memories, people. Feelings. But what about your environment? The places? The town? The city? If you stay in the same place while growing up, your town becomes your entire world. Each back alley, park, street, restaurant, and school is wired into your brain. Your milestone experiences during your childhood are encased within most of all the known world (to you, anyway.)
It’s hard to quantify just how much of a world is out there. The melting pot of cultures in cities across the world, regions thousands of miles away that put a local park to shame. As you grow older, your capacity for more grows with age. More cultures to take in, more places to see, and more experiences to feel. Responsibilities mount, so do what you can while you can.
There are so many different ends to an incalculable number of spectrums. Experiences far beyond the liminal walls of your childhood – skills your younger self would never have dreamed possible, let alone master. New skills and experiences that will bring new people into your universe, people you can learn and grow from. Situations that you might not remember as positive but prove to be crucial learning points in the long term. Or, you could have all of this live in a bubble of regret decades down the line. It’s your choice.
Express yourself
So many regrets people experience, be it professional, romantic, or otherwise, stem from a lack of self-expression. For instance, as I touched on earlier, if you don’t speak your mind and act on creative interests, whether that’s writing a book or making some art, you may regret it further down the line. This doesn’t mean you’ll follow the cliché film script where a character goes on a destructive but transformative journey because they gave up a creative passion and chose a job they hate, however. For you, in the real world, not chasing these creative urges simply means you are not sharing your voice. You’re not speaking up for yourself.
That, essentially, is what this article is all about. By listening to your interests, trying new things and investing in relationships, you’re giving your future self something to remember in the future. Something to learn and grow from. Something to shape your world a little bit more.
After all, it is better to have loved and lost than not loved at all.
