Tom Smith

The list link is broken. I think you need an http:// in there.

Here's a link with non-borked html (until Tom can fix it)

http://www.lifehacker.com/5904390/add-these-five-commands-to-the-top-of-your-to+do-list-avoid-the-most-common-deathbed-regrets

Breathe. So many people gasp or sip the air, and as a result have little energy (and it cycles to the point where it becomes hard to breathe). Deep breaths (and for focus, in through the nose and out through the mouth), and NOTICE it. Especially notice it during the spring, unless you've got plant allergies, or when you're around something (or someone) who smells awesome.

Maintain a sense of humor - anything you can laugh at, you can survive. (Macabre and "black" humor count; ask any emergency or hospital worker.)

I like the list from your link, Tom. I also think Mark's thought on the matter is a good one: "Live each day as if it's your last. One day, you'll be right."

I would also add "Don't be afraid to live." I try to focus on this one, because I have anxiety issues, but I don't want to be at the end of my life, having only known fear, instead of love and family and friends.

*hugs* And thanks for posting this.

Don't ignore yolk dreams?

I think the list is too non-specific. I suspect most people get to the end of their lives with very specific regrets: lovers not pursued, specific harm done. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's mentor, and one of the inventors of the modern Republican fear-mongering tactics, spent a year, dying of cancer, repenting those. Of course, his repentance didn't fix anything. Maybe, eventually, it will change some minds.

I'm pretty sure one of my deathbed regrets will be that I was unemployed so much (not that I had a whole lot to do with that), and had consequently had a crappy old age. "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" seems to be a regret of the long-term financially comfortable.

In the last decade or so I've been figuring out "being happy". At one point I realized I was always noticing I was happy in retrospect but rarely at the time. Sort of like "wow, I was so happy *then* before I did *so and so* why didn't I realize it then". So my goal became to notice the good things and the happy times. Not to change or to do anything more than that. It began there and has pretty much been improving exponentially as the years have gone on.

Another biggie is that old idea of "not sweating the small stuff - it's all small stuff".

I might add a couple and post about simplifying my outlook in a post of my own :). *hugs*

I try to live life in a way that is kind to both myself and others. I appreciate and love my friends for the talents they have, and try to encourage them to live their dreams, as I am living mine as a teacher, and musical performer.

My thought, looking at that list, was "Wow, so a lot of comfortable middle-class folks had the luxury of not working-too-hard." Then again, the kind of people who can AFFORD to die in hospice care are the kind who've never had to worry too much about making ends meet on a long-term basis.The list completely ignores the obligations and responsibilities too many people have - not to mention the unthinking privilege of the well-off.

And don't get me started on that "follow your dreams" bullshit - that is some incredibly privileged crap right there. I've watched friends follow their dreams into a nice slow descent into abject poverty.

My sister was an artist. But she's spent the last 30 years living in bad financial shoals and working her ass off at jobs she hates - to support the two kids her asshole deadbeat ex-husband left her with. (Oh, HE'S following HIS dreams somewhere else, spending his money like a carefree bachelor dude on Wife #4 or #5 and blowing through his parents' inheritance.) She will retire in debt unless she works till she's very old. But hey, yeah, she should totally quit her soul-sucking job, leave her adult disabled son to dangle in the wind, and just go back to her art.