Personal Discovery: Legacy After Death Part 2

Not only do we need to know what we want to do, we need to be aware of everything we don’t want to miss out on. In previous chapters, we’ve talked about how to figure out our priorities, or what’s important to us. We’ve talked about what we dream of doing. We’ve talked about the impact we have on both others and ourselves. But here, I’d like to ask you, what do you not want to regret? It is said, “Those who fail to try, try to fail.” Imagine you are on your deathbed, flipping through the memories of your life in your mind. At that moment, what stands out the most? What are your most important memories? What do you regret ever happening? What risks should you have taken? What do you not want to regret?

The things that stand out the most at the end of our life are those that are important to you in some way, whether they be things that are cherished or things that mark us in some definable way that made us the person we are today. The things that are cherished need to maximized in our lives for the future and those that mark us should be carefully stored in the past so that we can go back to them as a sort of map for how we became how we are.

For those things in the past that you regret happening, first of all, there is no need to regret them. They are a part of you, your identity, and they have imparted many lessons on what we shouldn’t do and how much burden we can bear. Second of all, use them as a template for future actions, so that we can more likely prevent ourselves from future regrets and not only that, but be able to guide others away from regrettable actions with our own personal experiences. We are able to have empathy for others who have gone through similar situations, comforting them by truthfully saying, “I understand”. Finally, as there is no currently plausible way to travel back into time, there’s nothing we can do to change those past regrets. Move forward; make the next moments and days and years of your life without regret. Sometimes, no matter how trite or cliché it sounds, it is better to have tried and failed than never trying at all for if we try, we have a chance at succeeding but if we never try, we will always fail to achieve.

We only have our one chance at life and we don’t want to come to the end of that wishing to have done it differently. I don’t want to come to the end of it and leave behind a legacy of hurt and disappointment. I want to know that I have lived my life to the best of my abilities, no matter how long or short my life may have been. In this way, we need not be fearful going into death because we have succeeded in life.