Adventure is a State of Mind
I’m dying.
Before you get upset and send me messages of support, let me reassure you that it’s nothing unusual. I’m dying, and so are you.
We’ve all been dying since the moment we were born. Life is terminal. As they say, no one gets out alive.
My biggest frustration about the situation is that no one can tell us how much longer we have left. It might be years, days, hours. We just don’t know.
Expiration Dates and Someday
The thought of not knowing the date of our last day in this life, though, doesn’t have to be sad. What is sad is that most of us are living as though we have decades or even hundreds of years left. We spend hours on our phones scrolling through the news or Pinterest or Instagram. We read books we’re not enjoying much because our friends or Oprah recommended them. We watch movies we’ve already seen more times than we can count because they’re easy to numb out to.
All of this mindless activity doesn’t mean we’ve given up our dreams. Most of us have at least vague ideas of things we’d like to do and places we’d like to visit. But instead of taking action to turn those dreams into realities, we put them off until “someday.”
I’ve taken a good, long look at the calendar, and I can’t find “someday” anywhere. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. There are things I’ve been putting off for years to do “someday,” and that day has yet to arrive.
Why do we do this? Why do we put off taking action on experiences we know we’ll enjoy? Oliver Burkeman, the author of Four Thousand Weeks and its companion book, Meditations for Mortals, theorizes that for many of us, having a long list of activities we want to do or a pile of books we plan to read gives us the illusion of immortality. Subconsciously, we believe that as long as there remain books we’re planning to read, hobbies we’re planning to start, and trips we’re planning to take, we can’t die.
That “someday” list is our philosopher’s stone of immortality.
The problem is it just doesn’t work that way. And we know it. No matter how many books we have left to read or trips we still plan to take, we all have an expiration date.
Dying Regrets
In the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying – A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departed, the author and former hospice carer, Bronnie Ware, identifies the five most common regrets expressed by people who know they have just weeks or days to live:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
When failing health means we can no longer convince ourselves we will live forever, what’s important to us becomes crystal clear. But at that point, it’s too late to do anything about it.
The key to minimizing regrets is to clarify what’s important to us when we still have the health and energy to do something about it. To actually take action on those priorities is when the true magic of transformation occurs!
Action is Key
Many of us have a vision of our ideal self, whether it is someone who gets up early to exercise everyday, someone who plays the guitar, or someone who isn’t afraid to travel by herself through Mongolia. No matter what the vision is, the difference between being someone who “someday” will do something and the person who follows through and embodies that vision is action.
A friend recently told me she used to be jealous of people she knew who lived creative lives, whether they were sewing or making works of art. Then one day, she decided that rather than feeling jealous, she would start living the life she admired. She explained how she told herself it didn’t matter whether she knew what she was doing or could do the activities well. The important part was just doing something.
Over time, those actions gave her the experiences she needed to grow as a creative, and she became more comfortable calling herself an artist.
Interestingly, as my friend gained experience by taking action, those actions also led to new opportunities, which resulted in even more experience. Much like compounding interest on a savings account grows faster and faster as the previous gains accumulate, her creative and artistic endeavors began accumulating faster and faster. She recently changed jobs and is now working for a museum, a job she stated she would never have been offered if a few years earlier she hadn’t started taking small steps toward living a more creative life.
Experience Needed
Action is key, but keep in mind it has to be real action. What do I mean by “real action?” What I’m calling real action refers to something that actually moves you closer to your desired goal and results in experience.
When considering a goal, it is easy to put your energy into preparation that actually becomes a way to avoid taking action. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. Here’s an example from my life – I enjoy drawing and painting, and over the years I’ve dabbled in it. But there have been long stretches of time (we’re talking years!) when I’ve bought books and art supplies and have thought about what I’d like to do with the new supplies, but I haven’t actually produced any art. Nothing. Nada.
At the time, I felt like I was encouraging my artistic pursuits by buying more paper, pencils, and paint, but realistically, nothing was happening. Compare that to someone who may not spend much on art supplies, but every single day they spend time sketching on whatever pieces of paper they can find. Guess whose artistic talents will grow? Yup, the person who is actually doing something.
Sometimes we avoid taking action because we know the outcome won’t be as perfect as we want it to be. (What in life ever is?!) But with art, action and experience change us from a person who would like to paint into an artist. With travel, action and experience change us from someone who would like to travel into a traveler. A brave, wise traveler!
We spend so much time making plans for the future, often depending on things coming at a later date to assure our happiness or assuming we have all of the time in the world, when all we ever have is our life today.
Bronnie Ware
Do It Now
At this point, you may be rolling your eyes and saying, “Duh!”
Most of us know that action is the difference between a dream and reality. The problem goes back to that belief (dare I say, delusion) that we will live forever.
It’s difficult to overcome the inertia of our daily lives. Achieving our dreams often involves some difficulties, whether it is finding the time or money to do them or developing a skill that makes it possible. If these things were easy, we probably would have done them by now!
None of us is guaranteed tomorrow, however, so if there’s something you really want to do and will regret not having done it when you arrive at the end of your life, it’s important to move up your timetable and do it as soon as possible.
I recently ran into a former neighbor. When I told her that Greg and I had visited Scotland this past summer, she told me she had always wanted to visit Scotland, but due to having a degenerative disease, her mobility was now so limited that she did not think such a trip would be possible for her. It was sad to know that she had not taken action on her desire to visit Scotland several years ago when her disease had not progressed as far as it has now.
I don’t know her financial situation, so I can’t judge whether she could have taken the trip in the past. I do know, however, that for many people, the limiting factor has less to do with money and more to do with believing they have more time than they actually do.
Your Travel Dreams
Is there someplace you dream of visiting? It could be Paris, Tokyo, or Grand Teton National Park. Is there a travel experience everyone knows you want to do because you talk about it repeatedly? It could be swimming with dolphins or taking a river cruise in Europe.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re dreaming of something it seems like everyone has posted to Instagram or it’s someplace none of your friends have even heard of. What’s important is it is someplace that you are dreaming of… and it’s something you’ll regret not doing if you get the news tomorrow that you only have a week to live.
What’s Stopping You?
Think about what is preventing you from taking action toward achieving your dreams. If it is finances, you might not be able to book your dream trip today, but there likely are steps you can take today, such as starting to save some money each month, to make your dream happen within a specific period of time rather than waiting until someday.
“Someday” is such an amorphous word that it is virtually meaningless. It’s hard to create a goal and take action when the target date is someday.
If it’s not money, what is stopping you? There’s a good chance that it’s fear, even if it’s disguised as something else. We often fear doing things we’ve never done before and don’t know how to do. Or sometimes we fear how those closest to us will react if we decide to pursue our dreams, especially if we think they will find our dreams “weird.”
Fear is such a hard wall to climb over that we often don’t even try. Instead, we stick with what we know, such as scrolling on our phone or binge-watching a new series on Netflix.
Being afraid is a very uncomfortable feeling. I don’t want to minimize how hard it can be to face the fear keeping us from reaching for our dreams. I’m not going to just recommend being courageous. It may be what’s needed, but obviously, facing our fears is much easier said than done.
Instead, I’m going to encourage you to imagine yourself dead. Well, not actually dead but mostly dead. To quote Miracle Max in the movie, The Princess Bride – “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive.”
Imagine lying on your death bed, too sick to do anything except think back over your life. If that day comes next week or next month, how will you feel about the life you’ve led up to this point? My wish for all of you is that you feel a great deal of gratitude for the relationships you’ve shared and the experiences you’ve had. You might be sad to be leaving this life too soon, but if you feel you lived a life true to yourself and there’s nothing you regret doing or not doing, I would say you’re on the right track now for the rest of your life.
None of us will live long enough to do everything we could or want to do. If in this exercise you picture that you’ve managed to do the things that are most important to you, however, you’ll die with fewer or no regrets.
On the other hand, if you imagine yourself on your deathbed and immediately you feel an ache that you didn’t do something, try to stay with that feeling for a little while. This might be just a mental exercise right now, but if you don’t take action, someday that feeling of regret will be reality. Someday you really will die, even if you never took that dream trip.
The value of this exercise is in thinking about what you regretted. Those are the areas where you need to take action today, not someday.
What have you not done that created that twinge of regret? Was it talking with a friend with whom you lost touch 20 years ago? Is it learning to play the piano? Is it walking on a beach in Hawaii? It may be something you’ll need to put some effort and planning into creating, such as a trip to Hawaii. But, it also could be something you could do this week, such as picking up the phone and calling that long-lost friend.
What You Didn’t Do vs What You Did Do
What if what keeps you from taking action is a fear of making a mistake?
There is an interesting research finding that people are more likely to regret what they didn’t do than what they did do. One possible explanation for this is that when we do things that we later view as mistakes, most of the time, we at least take away some lesson from the experience. On the other hand, the regret of not doing something we could have done is a regret that sometimes intensifies over time.
So, making an attempt at something, even if it doesn’t turn out the way we want, tends to leave us with less regret than not attempting the thing in the first place.
Using Regrets
The mental exercise we previously discussed helps to clarify what we will regret if we don’t at least try to live our dreams. That gives us a list of things to take action on right now.
Focusing on the lessons learned by past mistakes helps soften the regrets related to mistakes we made in the past and the regret related to them.
But what about those regrets over things we didn’t do in our past that we can’t do anything about now? These are often missed opportunities, such as not taking that job that was in another state, not asking your crush out for a date in college, or not joining your friends who invited you to go backpacking with them across Europe the summer after you all graduated.
You might identify some of these as things you will regret on your deathbed, but also realize that you can’t go back in time to take advantage of those missed opportunities. You can, however, figure out what those regrets are telling you.
Rather than thinking of the regret specifically – “I should have asked my crush to go to a movie with me” – look at what the regret represents and what caused it. Was it about being shy and afraid to initiate interactions with others? Was it related to a fear of being rejected by others? Was it due to an inability to ask others for what you want?
There are often many reasons for why we do what we do. Roll the different possibilities around in your mind until you land on the one that rings the most true to you. If you struggle to figure it out, talk to a friend or therapist about what happened (and why) until your gut reaction says you’ve gotten to the root of the regret.
Then look at where in your life now you’re experiencing a similar dilemma.
I guarantee there are areas in your current life where you are at risk to make the same mistakes. How do I know this? Because when we resolve the underlying problem, the regrets soften or sometimes even go away completely. So continued regret indicates a continuing issue to work on.
Let’s use the example of never asking your college crush to go out with you. If you realize this was because of your fear of being rejected, and you also recognize you still struggle with the same fear, you can take steps to address it by initiating interactions with others now. Maybe you could invite a coworker to go out for coffee or a neighbor to come over for dinner. Maybe you could start up a conversation with the person you repeatedly see at your gym but don’t know their name. Over time, having these experiences will likely reduce your fears of being rejected. And as you become more confident, the regrets regarding your college crush will lose some of their sting.
Travel Regrets
I have two regrets related to travel. One is that I didn’t study abroad while I was in high school or college and the other is that I missed an opportunity to nanny for two families who were traveling to Block Island one summer when I was in graduate school.
Both of these are the types of regrets that are lost opportunities where I can’t go back for a do over, but I’ve used them to become a better traveler. When I examined both situations, there were several contributing factors, but there was one that they both had in common – in both cases, I was afraid to choose the exciting but unknown (and therefore scary) opportunities at the price of missing out on the more mundane but known (and therefore less scary) experiences.
Regarding study abroad, I didn’t know what the experience would be like and whether I would make any friends at a new school in a new country, and I worried that I would miss out on spending time with the friends I already had. (And maybe even worried the friends I had would forget about me.)
Regarding traveling to Block Island, because it would have taken up the first part of my summer, I wouldn’t have been able to work as a lifeguard in my hometown (a job I knew and was comfortable with after having done it for previous summers) and I would have needed to find a different job when I returned from Block Island, a prospect that seemed scary to me at the time.
Looking back on this from my current age and life experience, my reasons for missing out on great opportunities seem immature. Heck, they were immature. I was immature. That’s what life’s regrets do for us. When we let them, they give us lessons to learn. And that’s the essence of maturity – living through lots of lessons!
Those lessons contributed to the traveler I’ve become. Once I identified the regrets, I was determined to be braver in the face of the unknown and to not always pick the familiar, comfortable choice. Since then, when friends invited me to travel with them, even if I wasn’t sure what to expect from the trip, I almost always said “yes!” And when trying to plan a trip, even before I could look at places on Google Maps or even when I don’t speak the language, I’ve made the decision that the fun and excitement of the experience will outweigh the fear of the unknown.
There’s Still Time
The good news for most of us is there’s still time to avoid future regrets. If you’re reading this, you’re alive right now. And the odds are you’re still healthy enough to take action on making at least some of your dreams a reality. But doing so means you need to start today, rather than waiting for someday.
We’re all going to die someday. What do you want to do before someday arrives? How do you want to live and what action can you take today to get you a step closer to that goal?
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