“So Much Wasted Time”
Look at the picture above. Both of these women are 80 years old. It is a striking photo when it comes to contrasts. We will come back to this in a second.
The title is what I want to make this post about because these are the last words of singer and actor David Cassidy. Last words give us a pretty good idea of what people are thinking about and what they value. The end of life is a fascinating time to explore as hospice nurses can tell us. We can learn a great deal about regret when we are close to death or when we are young, healthy and full of energy. This is a choice.
We can also choose to learn about the Authentic self and the process of transitioning from our false self into what we were truly created to be. This is a process that is inevitable for everyone, whether we realize it or not. At the end of our lives, the only self that keeps going is our True Self. Finding and releasing our Authentic Self while we are still alive and full of energy has many, many benefits, as I’ve written about in my books.
What I’ve tried to accomplish in writing the Authentic Self series is a kind of road map or guide book to help us get closer to who we were created to be before the end of our lives. The whole idea is to avoid uttering the words, “so much wasted time” at the end of our lives.
When we get closer to our Authentic Self, we are engaging in our passion while pursuing our purpose. We are bold, competent and have healthy and spiritually driven goals. Our Authentic self is passionate, enlightened and bold. It is infused with power and energy.
Avoiding Regret
In my first book of the Authentic Self series, Brave the Wave, I listed the regrets of hospice patients at the end of life. Here is an excerpt from the book,
Maybe we should be thinking about death a little more, so we can value the time we have today. When people are close to dying, and they can see the finish line, they start to see the things that are most important. Family, relationships, other people. They also start to think about the things they wish they’d done.
In his book Resisting Happiness, Matthew Kelly[i] made a list of regrets he compiled from interviews with hospice nurses. Here’s a list of some of the most common regrets expressed by people who were dying:
I wish I’d had the courage to just be myself.
I wish I’d spent more time with the people I love.
I wish I’d made spirituality more of a priority.
I wish I hadn’t spent so much time working.
I wish I’d discovered my purpose earlier.
I wish I’d learned to express my feelings more.
I wish I hadn’t spent so much time worrying about things that never happened. (this is the essence of fear and anxiety)
I wish I’d taken more risks. (also related to fear and anxiety)
I wish I’d cared less about what other people thought. (another obstacle caused by fear)
I wish I’d realized earlier that happiness is a choice.
I wish I’d loved more.
I wish I’d been a better spouse.
I wish I’d taken better care of myself.
I wish I’d paid less attention to what other people expect.
I wish I’d quit my job and found something else I really enjoyed doing.
I wish I would have stayed in touch with old friends.
I wish I’d touched more lives.
I wish I hadn’t spent so much time chasing the wrong things.
I wish I’d had more children.
I wish I’d traveled more.
I wish I’d thought about life’s big questions earlier.
I wish I’d lived more in the moment.
I wish I’d pursued more of my dreams.
I wish I’d spoken my mind more.
You want real value? There it is. It’s like the answers to a test before you take the test.
There’s real clarity and wisdom when you get close to the end. When you know your time is very limited, you tend to realize what has real value and what doesn’t.
There are some real insights into our lives when we read this list. If we look at it carefully, we can see common themes that can help us right now in our own journey. Why wait until we’re dying to look at these regrets? We can start to look at what people really value and then examine our own lives.
Five or six of these regrets deal with the relationships we have while we’re alive. As we’ve discussed in our examples of near-death experiences, relationships with other people are the main scenes that are shown to us. We rarely hear about someone reviewing an episode in their lives when they’re alone. Rather, the focus of these experiences is love. We can see from this list of regrets that people are wishing they’d focused more on their relationships with a spouse, significant other, child, or old friends.
Relationships are what’s important in this life. Family and friends. Spouses and children. The family is the laboratory and classroom where we learn how to love. Learning to love starts in the family, then branches to friends from school and then friends at work or at church. Those are the things that have real value.
[i] Matthew Kelly, Resisting Happiness, second ed. (New York: Beacon, 2016).
If we go over some of these regrets, clearly, not spending time on relationships and love are some of the most common regrets that people have. This is a good list to keep on your desktop or as a screen saver to remind us of what is important in this life.
The interesting thing about this when it comes to end of life awakening and a realization of what is important is that we can see way more clearly when we are close to the end. We begin to realize what’s most important. That’s why I like studying near-death experiences. Besides being fascinating to me personally, I believe they give us spiritual insights that we can’t find anywhere else. They give us a glimpse into the spiritual world that if we are being honest with ourselves, we can’t find in our current pursuits, many of which are a waste of time. David Cassidy profoundly told us this in his last words.
When we look at near-death experiences and the wisdom and spiritual insights they provide, we can see that one of the main reasons for these experiences is wisdom and education. Teaching. Enlightenment.
The Authentic Self
Dr Kenneth Ring describes this learning process in his book “Lessons from the Light”
I have talked about this authentic or true self as something that is the Light’s function to disclose to the individual. How does it do that? The answer is, often by first showing the NDEr his or her false or socially conditioned self.… In other instances, however, the NDEr is given a direct perception into the nature of the false self and is thereby allowed intuitively to understand that the person one has identified with and habitually thought of as one’s essential self was nothing more than fiction.[i]
[i] Ring, Lessons from the Light, 54.
Fr Richard Rohr describes the false self in his best selling book “The Immortal Diamond”
Your soul—your True Self, your deepest identity, your unique blueprint—is who you are in God and who God is in you. You’re false self dies when you die. Only you’re true self lives forever.
The whole point of moving closer to authenticity is to begin to understand what has value in this life. On this road we discover passion, purpose, meaning and identity. These are all so very crucial to help us survive in a world full of suffering. It also points out the pervasive devaluing of truth. We can empower our growth by remembering that Jesus is truth. That is what he called himself.
“I am the way and the Truth and the life, No one comes to the Father except through me.”
(John 14:6 NLT)
Part of this journey and this growth involves accepting personal responsibility. It’s on you and it’s on me.
If not us, Who? If not now, When ?
Taking personal responsibility allows us to overcome our fear, uncover our passion and pursue purpose. There are a lot of lies being spread right now around the world, some of which I wasn’t even aware until recently. False doctrine and blatant lies are being propagated everywhere we look. Its very obvious. We should remember that Satan’s title is “The Father of Lies”.
If we go back and look closely at the photo at the top of this post, it clearly shows a striking difference in appearance of the two women both of which are 80. The problem is that we don’t know if the woman on the right has debilitating rheumatoid arthritis so she isn’t able to exercise or she may have a chronic medical problem. But if we assume that both are healthy 80 year old females, clearly the choices that we make have an impact on our appearance and our health.
But what about spiritual growth and the Authentic Self? We have no idea how strong spiritually either of these women are. The woman with a walker could be a spiritually mature, closer to authenticity, believer and the one on the left may still be an 80 year old spiritual infant. I have met a few of those.
As I mentioned in Discover Your Passion, we can grow spiritually stronger all the way into our nineties, even if our bodies are failing us, (that would be me) at the current moment.
Keep growing and keep moving. Just a reminder, Challenge Your Fear, Empower Your Spirit, is now available on Amazon for .99 cents. I believe its my best book yet.
Discover Your Passion,
Challenge Your Fear,
Pursue Your Purpose
Find Meaning
Take responsibility for moving toward Authenticity
You will never regret it
Your Brother in Christ
Johnny Cavazos MD
Authentic Self Series (3 book series) Kindle Edition (amazon.com)