Regret

and why you should chase your dreams

Happy Friday,

I’ve been working with a guy who needed to get online fast, because the shut-downs closed his business and he doesn’t want to lay off staff. 

Hurry, hurry, hurry. 

No time to write. No time to create. No time.

Life should not be like a road trip with a small child, started with enthusiasm that only wanes with mileage. Are we there yet? How long? I’m tired, are we there yet?

The last few weeks reminded me that it’s easy to get so busy working in our life, we forget to work on our life. 

It’s not just work, or business. 
Life works that way, too.

The to-do list is longer than your arm and you’re always hurrying to get things stroked off the list faster than you add to it. Hurry, hurry. 

Because time is all there is… right?

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“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.” — Benjamin Franklin

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Rewards are great incentive, they say…

Self-help articles talk about time management — yay Pomodoro technique — don’t forget to take 5 minutes off for every 25 minutes you slog. It’s all time management, right? Time is life. 

Tick tock. Use it well. 

Rewards are great incentive, they say.

Get that report done, the website up, article posted, basement cleaned and if you reward yourself for everything you finish, it creates incentive to complete things instead of leaving them. Unfinished. 

So you reward yourself. Fancy wine. Bubble bath. Go out to dinner.

Just like teacher rewarded you with gold stars or stickers back in the days when grown-ups taught your impressionable young mind how life works.

Except, life doesn’t work that way. 

We carrot on a stick our way through life. Tick tock, time passes. 
Until it’s too late. 

Until we die with a belly full of regret. 

The #1 regret of people who are dying is that they wish they’d had the courage to live their life the way they wanted to instead of doing what everyone else and the world expected of them.

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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

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Regret is a lonely companion

Good Friday, several years ago. I was working when the phone rang. Glanced over and saw my sister’s number. Picked up.

“Dad’s dying,” she said.

They brought him in with pneumonia. But then they found a pulmonary embolism and a tumor in his stomach, and… 

There’s a lump in my throat and tears rolling down my face and I can’t even speak, but she’s still talking. He’s legally blind. The doctor said he could go into a care home, or live with a caregiver. Those are his options. 

He can’t go home. 

So I moved 2800 kilometres back to my hometown to care for him. 

We danced with dementia that year, Dad and I. He was in the early stages. Mostly lucid. Sometimes, horribly not.

Sitting on the deck one early summer morning, he said he wished he’d never left the farm. All he ever wanted was the sun on his face and dirt on his hands. Then he covered his face with his wrinkled old hands and cried. 

Too late, too late. 

Regret is a lonely companion.

So I dug up the lawn in the back yard and we planted a garden together. His joy was palpable and when we were done, he flopped into a lawn chair, covered in dirt. I asked if he wanted to come in and wash up.

Nope, he said. 

Said he just wanted to keep the dirt on his hands a little longer. In case it’s the last time he ever gets to plant a garden. 

It was.

I hope you still have dreams…

Sometimes, life beats them out of us. You know? Bills to pay, family to raise up and care for, houses to clean, meals to cook, groceries to buy, bosses to please, jobs to find, kids to drive here and there and hug and love, side hustle to fill the coffers because the dog or cat needs to go to the vet and lives disappear in a flurry of doing.

It’s too easy to forget what our dreams even were.
Or that we ever had any.

Opportunity and need shriek so loudly. 

Dreams, who has time for dreams?

I hope you do.

I hope you still have dreams. And if you don’t, or if you let go of them long ago because they weren’t practical or realistic, or there wasn’t time, I hope you find the courage to dig into the cobwebs and brush the dust off. Or maybe even, find a new one. 

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“You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.”
—C.S. Lewis

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Dreams are the only real thing life has to offer

Sometimes, we set our dreams aside as impractical. Tell ourselves the slog is “reality” and we need to get real. So we pull on the grown up pants and do what needs doing. Right? 

Some of the most amazing creators almost made the same mistake. 

Charles Darwin wrote On The Origin of the Species when he was 50 and James Parkinson identified Parkinson’s disease when he was 62. Frank McCourt wrote his Pulitzer winning book when he was 65, and Grandma Moses didn’t pick up a paintbrush until she was 76.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry almost made the same mistake.

Born an aristocrat, his family was plunged into poverty when his father died. So he joined the navy to get an education, learned to fly and made a name for himself as a pioneer of aviation.

A successful commercial pilot before World War II, he worked airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America. Joined the French Air Force at the start of the war, flying reconnaissance missions and became famous for his aviation mastery. He convinced America to oppose Hitler’s regime, they said. 

Wrote books about aviation, too, and they were well lauded in his career.
He’d always wanted to be a writer.

In 1943, he penned a book about a little prince who was stranded on a strange planet for 8 days after his plane broke down. As the narrator tries valiantly to fix the plane to send him home, The Little Prince makes poignant observations about life and love and human nature.

Written for children, loved by adults, that little book sold 140 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling and most-translated books in all of publishing history. 

15 months after the book was published, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry got into his little plane and flew off into the blue skies, never to be seen again.

It seems only fitting to leave you with his words… 

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“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Click here, and thank you!

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Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed, click the little heart because that’s how I know what you’re enjoying so I can write more of what you like.

Take care, stay safe out there, and see you next week…

:)
Linda