When You Get to the End, Will You Celebrate or Regret?
Life is full of choices both made and not made.
No matter what happens between now and tomorrow, your life will come to an end.
Sorry if that’s a very downer statement. But it’s a simple truth for everyone everywhere.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, your social status, wealth or lack, or any other factor you can think of. Life ends for everyone.
You can look at this as a real bummer. You may also lament, rue, and otherwise desire to avoid this truth as much as you possibly can.
However, that can open you to an end result you might not want.
Avoidance of this, that, or the other thing – people, places, experiences – to protect yourself can serve many purposes. But if you do it all the time to avoid suffering, you close yourself off to living rather than merely surviving.
You are meant to experience life by living it, not merely surviving it. Because no matter what you do, it will end. But before that happens, here and now, you can address this via the choices you make.
The question might be off-putting, but still a worthwhile inquiry. When you get to the end, will you celebrate or regret?
The meaning of life
You get to choose to simply be, and go with life’s flow; to avoid pain, injury, failure, and other unpleasantries; to see life as one big shit show full of things to complain about and blame others for; or to live life, take chances big and small, and experience the adventure.
The quest for the meaning of life has roped in philosophers, scholars, gurus, and ordinary people with ordinary lives. They seek this great meaning and turn to God, forces of nature, and various other powers beyond themselves for enlightenment, answers, and comfort.
But what if the meaning of life is incredibly simple? What if the meaning of life is this:
LIVE
Do things, Experience things. Meet new people. Go to different places. Eat unique foods. Take the boat ride. Try skydiving. Take classes. Read books.
Do, have, be, experience. Give it a try (not the half-assed “Try not. Do or do not.” Yoda admonishes) to see what it does for you. See how it feels, if you like it or not, if it’s something you’d care to do again or not. Experience life by living.
With consent, kiss that person you want to kiss. Go out and have that exotic meal with the scary protein. Wake up in the middle of the night to watch the sunrise.
That’s the meaning of life, my friends. Living. Experiencing. Taking this one shot you get in that body you occupy to explore this world in this time.
Will you celebrate or regret at the end?
I don’t know who said it, but I once heard or read the following (can’t directly quote, but here it is):
At the end of life, you can either arrive undamaged, pristine, and whole – but unfulfilled – Or – You can skid across the finish line sideways, damaged, broken but unbowed, and cry out, “Whoo hoo, what a ride!”
Every choice you make or don’t make will produce a result. You will make both good and bad choices in your life. Some paths will work out while others won’t.
Of course, you’ll have painful experiences (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all or a combination of these) where you’ll suffer. Those might cause you to hide away for a while, avoid pain, suffering, and making choices and decisions.
But you get to choose for how long that will be your way.
Here’s the thing – you have no idea how much time you’ve got. Take it from me – you can be going through the motions and just letting life happen, and then *bam*! You wake up in the hospital severely broken with no memory of how you got that way.
I was 27 years old. And I was nearly killed in a hit-and-run while crossing a busy street. But I survived, recovered, and have mostly thrived since.
I have my moments of languishing in my comfort zones. But then I do things, try things, and seek out experiences to live.
When I do reach the end – I plan to celebrate.
Hopefully, the end is far away from now. But here and now, I strive to experience and live my life.
You always have choices
To be fair, some choices are between bad and worse. Other choices might be between two evils. Yet they still exist. And you still get to make them.
But be careful not to put off too much of what you desire to do. That’s why I ask – When you get to the end, will you celebrate or regret?
If you currently are terrified of the end, look closer. Are you afraid you will have missed things? Do you fear that you’ll be regretful for all that you didn’t choose, chances you didn’t take, things you didn’t do?
Don’t let the fear of this keep you from looking at it. This might make the difference between reaching the end and celebrating or regretting.
If you haven’t done things up to now – start doing things. Make those choices, take the chances. Have those experiences.
BUT – and this is super important – this can only be in the here and now. Choices and decisions you already didn’t make in the past can’t be changed.
The past has passed and can’t be undone, redone, altered, or changed.
Here and now, however, you get to choose. The choice you make today – in this moment – can make a difference in what your end of life will look like.
Though I know it can be scary to consider – and deeply uncomfortable – please don’t disregard this. You have only one shot in that body, in this life, to live. The meaning of life is right there for you to take – and that is all about choices made now.
To celebrate or regret is a fluid concept
I made a bad choice on November 30, 1999. Rather than drive a quarter mile to the post office, I walked. And then I crossed a busy highway in the middle, rather than in a crosswalk.
I would spend a long time in nearly constant pain, ranging from dull to sharp. During the following year, I endured 3 surgeries, physical and occupational therapy, mobility issues, and challenges to recovering. To all intents and purposes, I lost a year of my life to that hit-and-run accident.
The poor choice that I made is regrettable. Had I driven or crossed in the crosswalk, would I be made of titanium now? What did I miss out on during that year I spent recovering?
But there’s another side to this coin.
I am the person I am today because of this. It made me stronger, wiser, and a lot more open to potential and possibilities. Rather than emerge weaker and head bowed, I emerged stronger, broken but unbowed, and gained invaluable lessons and insights about myself, life, the Universe, and everything.
This terrible incident could be the cause of regret from what might have been that wasn’t – or a celebration of a growth opportunity I chose to take.
Hence, to celebrate or regret is a fluid concept. And like all else – a choice to be made.
Mindfulness that the choice, the power, is yours
I hope that you are nowhere near the end of your life. And I hope that you can take this to heart and make new choices – here and now – to more likely celebrate than regret when you reach the end.
It will not be perfect all the time. Suffering is a natural, normal part of life. But not for the sake of suffering itself. Suffering in life occurs because suffering opens paths to new opportunities and possibilities.
When you practice active conscious awareness – here and now, in this moment – you practice mindfulness. That opens you to recognize and know what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, and what your intentions and actions are. That empowers you to take control of your life experiences.
When you practice being mindful here and now, you gain control of what you are and aren’t doing. That lets you make choices and decisions that will help you to experience life in new and unexpected ways.
It won’t always go how you hope for it to go. But then, what might you learn when that happens?
The choice, the power, is yours. You get to decide to celebrate or regret when you reach the end – however and whenever that might be.
Can you see how you can choose experiences and things – here and now – that will cause you to celebrate or regret when your life is eventually over?
This is the six-hundred and eleventh (611) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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