THE ELDER’S DEATHBED [An 8-minute Read with pictures]

Reading Shoshana Ungerleider's piece in a recent CNBC post, "Top 5 regrets people have on their deathbeds: What they can teach us about living healthy, fulfilled lives, from an internal medicine doctor," allowed me to contrast elder to older more competently.

Regret is a feeling of tension about a past choice, often accompanied by negative emotions such as?remorse, sorrow, and helplessness.?Regret commonly comes with an awareness of responsibility for wrongdoing or not doing so, causing guilt and shame.

I fully agree with Shoshana's observations about these five regrets and their impact. She reports, the top five regrets people have on their deathbeds are:

1.???? I didn't spend enough time with the people I love.

2.???? I worked too much and missed out on life.

3.???? I let fear control my decisions and didn't take risks.

4.???? I wish I'd been braver in the face of uncertainty or opportunity.

5.???? I focused too much on the future and lost touch with the present.?

Elders of course grapple with these same regrets.? These regrets are universal for late aging. You get old, you will have these regrets.? But elders handle them differently.

These regrets are deeply embedded in our collective conversations, whose central core is fearing death as the end of existence. Lights out. Game over. Elders see death differently.

By seeing it differently, elders alter their relationship with death where it isn’t game over it’s game on.

Elders recognize life always and only exists as duality.? Everything exists as a duality, including emotions like regret.

A duality refers to the existence of two opposing or contrasting aspects within a single concept, system, or phenomenon. It implies that these two aspects are interconnected, interdependent, but complementary, even though they appear as opposites.? Each one needs the other to exist for their very existence.

While one side of the duality, regret reflects sorrow, the other side of regret holds positive experiences such as satisfaction, contentment, gratitude, equanimity, fulfillment, joy, and freedom. ?

Getting to the other side of the duality puts elders in a different mental and physical ecosystem. But they must remain conscious that these five regrets remain in existence since you can’t have one without the other. ?It’s that other side of regret that’s most life-giving. ?

Elders learn to turn regrets into openings for understanding and action.? By becoming conscious on the other side of regrets, regrets’ entanglements let go. Manofwar jellyfish without tentacles. Regrets just float along but cannot sting.

Elders use these regrets as directional signals rather than closed road signs. They believe regrets tell them what they need to work on for a good death.

Elders know regrets are human and can remain as unchangeable characters at the end of their life story. However, elders realize that regrets are concepts.? Concepts are human constructs. They are not real. Look at how many concepts in your life have already gone out of existence. How’s your Diskman doing?

So, these five regrets simply become signposts on the contemporary elder's path of development. They become guides and teachers who transform regrets into thoughts and actions that allow a death unchained to these regrets. ?

These five regrets tell elders where to focus their attention, intention, contemplation, compassion, and self-inquiry.? The elder’s work is to get to the other side of these regrets – and practice staying there.?

HOW ELDERS TRANSFORM REGRETS

1.?? I didn't spend enough time with the people I love.

Elders know there is something underneath "spending time with people you love." ?Love is not time-dependent. Love is not related to “another person."

Love is a way of being, a consciousness, a phenomenon, an experience. Love doesn’t exist in time, so it’s not about having time. Love doesn't occur in the past because memories are thoughts of love, not love.

Love doesn't exist in the future. That's fantasy.

Love only occurs in the present moment. It's a “now” phenomenon.

Elders realize that the barriers to love are self-induced. And they realize if they don't have it, they can't give it; if they can't give it, they can't receive it. They need to be loved to have love.

So, love starts with self, and most people don't love themselves as they are. Elders overcome this hurdle through meditation, contemplation, higher purpose, and service to others.

Elders self-forgive, self-accept, self-appreciate, and self-empathize, which is their doorway to love.

“If you don't love yourself, you won't be happy with yourself. If you can't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. You can't give the love you do not have. You can't make anyone love you without loving yourself first.”

―?Kemi Sogunle

2. I worked too much and missed out on life.

Again, like all regrets, this one is chained to the past.

And like all regrets, it’s full of “could and should haves.”

Elders understand they can never fulfill a “could” or a “should.” They can never complete, be finished with, finally end a “should” or “could.”

"Could" and "should" are auxiliary (helping) verbs that keep you in a continuous loop of thought and inaction. They have no ending. Could or should do not exist in the present moment.? They only take you to the past or the future, away from the present moment.

The past has passed. It’s over. Elders don’t want their future overshadowed by the past, and that’s where regrets take you.

Elders take action at the moment to address what they deem is missing, realizing action stops the chatter of regrets. They move themselves fom the stands onto the field.

Ultimately, they realize how their working careers allowed what is deemed missing to appear. They would not have seen it if not for their hours of work. But now, they can do something about it.

They take conscious action. They make that call.? Write that e-mail.? Make a point of telling that person what they have been avoiding saying. They take the first step. The regret cannot live the movement of action which occurs moment to moment.

“Always Do Your Best. Your best will change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.” -Don Miguel Ruiz?

3.?? ?I let fear control my decisions and didn't take risks.

Elders know that most fear is not physical. Most fear lives in the future, where the "what ifs" of fear dominate the thinking and emotions.?

Elders have three arrows in the quiver to kill fear.?

a)?? Neurology: Elders consciously reframe fearful situations which engages their cortex (the thinking part of the brain). This involves rationalizing, problem-solving, and considering different perspectives, which mitigates the immediate fear response generated in the amygdala.

b)?? Acceptance: Elders develop a more accepting attitude towards uncertainty and fear. They understand that fear is a natural part of life and they approach it with greater equanimity. Acceptance is how they change their relationship to it.? Acceptance stops fear from overtaking them.

c)??? Wisdom and Guidance: Elders serve as guides or mentors, offering advice and reassurance based on their life experiences. Their guidance helps others, navigate their fears.? By serving others they serve themselves.

Elders facilitate the self-examination, “Who I am when fear happens in me.” Seeing the thoughts, emotions and when and where it occurs, makes fear far less ominous.

Elders know and practice “be here now.” In the “here and now” fear doesn’t have much oxygen. Fear is a function of the thinking mind, and getting to the present moment is the discipline to unchain the mind.

“When you come out of a storm you won’t be the same person that walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.”??— Haruki Murakami

“Feel the fear and do it anyway.” — Susan Jeffers

“Thinking will not overcome fear, but action will.” — W. Clement Stone?

4.?? ?I wish I'd been braver in the face of uncertainty or opportunity.

Elders stop judging others—and themselves—for perceived shortcomings in courage. They no longer dwell on thoughts like, “I wasn’t brave enough, I didn’t take the chance, I should have acted differently, or If only I had been bolder.”

Elders practice a fundamental shift in their relationship with their thoughts: they recognize that thoughts are transient. Knowing thoughts are impermanent, they come and they go, elders stop being enslaved by their thoughts; they simply have them. This understanding, which once was paralyzing when filled with regret, loses its grip.

For elders, the past is not something to be rewritten or lamented. They understand that it unfolded as it did, and it cannot be undone.

Rather than clinging to what could have been, they’ve learned to engage with a higher purpose—a calling that transcends past mistakes and missteps. This higher purpose anchors them in the present and drives their efforts to create a meaningful future.

Elders now operate with courage because they’ve come to fully embrace the reality of their mortality. The understanding that death is inevitable doesn’t envoke fear; instead, it inspires action.

Knowing that their time is finite provides a kind of liberation, a deep-seated courage to live more boldly and authentically. Death, paradoxically, grants them the freedom to live fully now, with purpose and bravery, unburdened by the regrets of missed opportunities.

“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” — Ralph Walk Emerson

?“There is no illusion greater than fear.” — Lao Tzu

5.?? I focused too much on the future and lost touch with the present.

The mind does a poor job of keeping people in the present. The thinking mind primarily uses the past or future tenses to think. Most thoughts have a time stamp.

That's the design of the mind. Its program performs poorly in being in the present, being in the here and now. Elders practices give them another route to the present moment other than through their thinking minds.

Elders realize that the bottom line truth is that all they have is the present, although it is most often colored by the past or the future. But elders can distance themselves from the thoughts of the past and from the thoughts of the future and be left only in the moment.?

“Enjoy the journey. Enjoy every moment and quit worrying about winning and losing.” – Matt Biondi

“We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” – Bill Watterson

“People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness.” – Abhysheq Shukla

“Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more”. – Mother Teresa

“The living moment is everything.” – David Herbert Lawrence?

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/23/regrets-people-have-at-end-of-lives-says-doctor-what-we-can-learn.html?mc_cid=12f346fb4c

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NOT “YES WE CAN,” BUT ‘YES WE MUST”

Our country sure could use the voices of elders now. Chaos, uncertainty, fear, and anxiety are overflowing. ?Elders are needed.

Today, there are 53 million people over the age of 65 in the U.S. whose wealth today totals between 45 to 60 trillion dollars.?

By 2030 there will 60 million over the age of 65, that’s 21% of the population, which puts this population into the Major Majority. The tipping point will have been surpassed.

By 2050, those over 65 will be 45% of the population at 90 million strong.? Their wealth with compounding and their population growth and longer life spans, will double to over 100 trillion dollars. More money than the U.S. Economy, Musk, Gates, and Zuckerberg combined.

And most critical, in 2050, only 25 years from now, those over 65 will outnumber those age15 and under? That will change everything. The cultural context of “younger” as the presiding context will be reversed.? Remember, context is always decisive.

If you are over 65, despise what’s going on now in our country, join the Elder Party.

If Arby “has the meats,” elders “have the money, the wisdom, the life experience, and therefore the power.”

Elders can get it done.?