Winnie the Pooh and the 5 Regrets of the Dying

“Maybe in the end

We will have understood

That we are not much more

Than what we give to others”, Today on your birthday, a Catalan song by Txarango, celebrating friendship.

More playfulness, connection, self-expression, friendship, authenticity… Gabor Maté, Canadian physician, speaks about the “5 regrets of the dying”, the regrets that people have in the last weeks of their life as reported by the Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware. Here is a summary of the most common things the dying would have done differently:

1 - I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. The courage to fulfill some of my dreams, to be in alignment with my own values and desires. To be congruent and authentic.

2 - I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I didn’t need to validate my own existence and prove my own worth, looking for external approval.

3 - I wish I had the courage to express my feelings, instead of suppressing them. I wish I had prioritised my emotional expression for my mental and physical health.

4 - I wish I stayed in touch with my friends. I wish I had valued and nurtured more personal connection and relationships, and celebrated the bonds I have with others. “At the end, only love and relationships remain”, says Bronnie Ware.

5 - I wish I let myself be happier, be present in the moment and allow myself to experience joy and playfulness as essential aspects of a fulfilling life.

When looking at these regrets, they come down to the two basic needs of human beings: the need for authenticity, self-expression, integrity, self-connection, and the need for belonging, emotional bonds and connection to others.

Gabor Maté points out that our difficulty to meet our need for authenticity lies in the impact of our childhood traumas on the suppression of oneself. When their need for attachment is in conflict with their need for authenticity, children always sacrifice their need for authenticity, so they can survive. This survival mechanism of suppressing our feelings to gain acceptance and approval in our early years is unconscious. Later in life it becomes part of our personality and can lead to a disconnect of one’s true feelings and to the need to impress others. Then authenticity becomes something frightening, because our unconscious memory tells us that “if I am authentic I will lose my attachments”.

From a systemic perspective, we could add that those behaviors may also be rooted in patterns that we inherit from our parents or ancestors.

If I am working too hard, I can ask myself the question: “For how many people am I working so hard?” “Who was it in my family system that was not allowed to work (because of handicap, family tradition, accident, social prejudice, war) that I am compensating for?”

If I can’t make any friends, an interesting question could be: “To whom in my family system am I being loyal? “Who was it in my family that could not make friends or did not feel the need to make friends?”.

As part of our family of origin, we are impacted by a larger conscience that makes us repeat or compensate for what happened before. Unconscious of these dynamics, we find it difficult to change our behaviour. Only after we have become aware of these entanglements can we start breaking the circle and choose to act differently.

Similarly, families are part of larger systems too. They exist within cultures, nations and states that have their own personalities. Some may foster more authenticity and belonging than others. It is not the same to live in a society that celebrates self-expression and connection than in an authoritarian country where protest movements are repressed and opinions are banned. I was born under a dictatorship that followed a civil war. Society was traumatised and post-traumatised, families, neighbors, doctors, teachers, everyone had been impacted in some degree by terror, cruelty, grief, imprisonment, betrayal and lack of freedom. At school, there was no place for self-discovery, exploration, curiosity or joy. On the contrary, humiliation, fear, corporal punishment and learning by repetition were the norm. The person I am today was also shaped by what happened to the whole society I was raised in. Later, democracy arrived, people could breathe more freely. Like other nations in the South of Europe, today people love to occupy public places with music, theater, dance and poetry. Expressing their joy to be alive and in a community, as well as their frustration while marching in large demonstrations.

If we want to live and die better, we have the choice to slow down and take the time to create more space in our life to address these questions. Cultivating our emotional and physical well being. Finding a “compassionate witness” that can listen, validate and accept the emotions and feelings of the little child we all carry inside. Becoming more honest in our interactions, which will strengthen our relationships or dissolve the ones that were not meant to be. Simplifying our lifestyle, so we don’t need to work so hard. Nurturing our friendships, fostering more playful moments and reclaiming our life’s spark.

At the end of his interview, Gabor Maté comments on the last line of one of his favorite books, Winnie the Pooh: “But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing. People sacrifice their playfulness, their joyfulness, for the sake of being accepted and being successful. We can all be with the little boy and his Bear, we can always keep playing in the Enchanted Forest.“

It is never too late to have a happy life.

A glimpse of joyful connection in Catalonia this year... Ballada del Contrapàs a la plaça Vella de Prats de LLuçanès