LIVING A LIFE WELL LIVED

Derek Hagen
6 minutes ago
4 min read

Hand-drawn illustration of two stick figures labeled Present You and Future You, with Future You saying "Please don't do these things."

❝I can't believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well.❞ -DMB, "Lie in Our Graves"

The deathbed is a terrible time to do life planning.

A LIFE WELL LIVED IS RETROSPECTIVE

We get one shot at this. And a life well lived is the story we tell ourselves when we look back on it, whether we feel satisfied, whether we feel we lived as we actually wanted to live.

Most people don't think deliberately about that story until it's too late to change it. But there's another way. Hearing what other people wished they had done differently, especially people at the very end of their lives, can help us write a better story while there's still time.

AUTOPILOT VS. INTENTION

The default mode for most people is autopilot. Not in a dramatic way; just in the ordinary, unremarkable way that most days go by without much examination. We reach for the chips, turn on something to watch, let the afternoon disappear. No single one of those moments is a problem. But they compound. Small unconscious choices, repeated across years, add up to a life, and at the end of it, that accumulation is what you're looking back on.

Hand-drawn diagram of two boxes labeled Impulse and Action placed close together, with "Autopilot" in red indicating the tiny gap between them.

The alternative is intention. Not in a rigid, optimized way; just knowing what you're doing and why. Meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein instructs people to breathe and know that they're breathing. To sit and know that they're sitting. The practice isn't about controlling the breath. It's about being present for it.

The same principle applies to the rest of life.

Walk your dog and know that you're walking your dog. Make a purchase and know that you're making a purchase. Make a decision and know that you're making a decision.

That gap between impulse and action, however small, is where a life well lived gets built or missed.

Hand-drawn diagram of two boxes labeled Impulse and Action placed far apart, with "Intention" in blue spanning the wide gap between them.

REGRETS OF THE DYING

Bronnie Ware worked as an end-of-life caregiver and spent years talking to people in the final weeks of their lives, asking what they wished they had done differently. The answers varied, but patterns emerged. She wrote about them in a blog post that eventually became a book: The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

The five regrets are:

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'd stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish I'd let myself be happier.

The interesting thing about this list isn't any single regret. It's the pattern underneath them. Almost every one is about permission. Permission to be yourself, to slow down, to feel things, to prioritize people, to enjoy your own life. These aren't failures of ambition or intelligence. They're failures of awareness.

Hand-drawn illustration of five tombstones representing Bronnie Ware's top five regrets of the dying — Conformed, Was Busy, Kept Quiet, Was Lonely, Wasn't Happy.

The Three-Dimensional Meaning in Life Scale assesses three dimensions of meaning in life: coherence, purpose, and significance. Coherence is the feeling that your life makes sense. Purpose is having direction in life. Significance is the belief that your life has value.

INSIGHTS FROM FUTURE YOU

The people Bronnie Ware was talking to had arrived at the end of their lives with remarkable clarity. They knew exactly what mattered. They knew exactly what they'd gotten wrong.

Hand-drawn life bar nearly fully shaded, with a stick figure at the edge saying "I got it figured out!" — illustrating clarity at the end of life.

The problem was timing.

Hand-drawn life bar nearly fully shaded, with a stick figure at the edge saying "I'm out of time!" — illustrating clarity that arrives too late.

This is what Ware was pointing at. The deathbed version of you has perfect clarity and zero runway. But that version of you doesn't deserve more weight than the version of you reading this right now... the one who still has time.

The regrets aren't a warning from the grave. They're a message from a future self, delivered early enough to do something about.

Hand-drawn life bar halfway shaded, with two stick figures — present self and future self — connected by an arrow labeled "Suggestions" flowing from future to present.

AIMING FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED ACTS AS A GUIDE

Understanding potential future regrets helps us design a life worth living. But knowing what we don't want is only half the work.

It's relatively easy to articulate what we want to avoid. The harder question is what we actually want instead.

You get one life; live intentionally.

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