How to not regret you life

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you have done anything you did last week in the same way? Or would you have done all the things you’ve always dreamed of, while you had the chance? But here’s the thing: When will the answer to these questions be ‘yes’? Will it ever be ‘yes’? 
 

The tragedy is that we spend our lives distracted from the things we deeply care about. Distracted by relentless work and the accompanying evenings of anaesthetic entertainment that take away our ability to think clearly and rationally about that question: what do you actually care about most? Because if you’re not spending your time on it now, when will you?

And then something happens: A desire for comfort persuades us to give up. But comfort becomes the thief of happiness.
Without frequent reminders of the fragility of life we drift thoughtlessly through the years, accepting the acceptable and ignoring the truth that’s waiting for us all in a hospital ward to reveal its cruel epiphany: there are no second chances. There never were. 

Apathy becomes us.

Humanity’s worst problems—war, poverty, environmental destruction—are choices. Choices made by people who seem to believe they’re doing what’s best. Even death is a choice when we choose to prioritize the research and administration of prevention for disease. By not choosing to prioritize the world’s problems, we contribute to their outcome in a different way— shaping the world with apathy. We give control to the few who do choose. Those who take control. And most of us don’t seem to mind. We seem to prefer to watch TV (The average American spends three hours a day watching TV1). Is that really what we care about most? Or is the reason behind this horrific waste of life more profound? Is there something very wrong with the way we’ve chosen to organise our world? Imagine how the world might change if each of us exchanged just one of those vacuous hours of cheap entertainment with one spent working towards a dream of a better world. One in which each person’s passions align with great needs. One without poverty, war or ecological destruction. Without disease, crime or cruelty. A paradise. A paradise that could be ours if only we could choose to prioritize it. And isn’t it strange, when you think about it, that we choose anything else? Isn’t it baffling? We’re like those bored parrots who’ve lost their reason for being and turned on themselves, plucking out their feathers until they’re naked and there’s no beauty left to destroy. We tell ourselves they have everything they need in their cages but deep down we know they would trade it all for freedom.