Often in old age, people look back at their lives to take stock of what they have done and what they missed out on, whether they lived a good life or not as per their own standards and as per the standards of others who matter. This introspection is a mandatory part of growing old because this sets the mind in the right perspective and prepares one for the final leg of the earthly journey.
One my of uncle’s, who had lived a long and full life, what with sons, daughters, grandchildren, flourishing business, a mini-fortune earned with continuous struggle and hard work throughout his life, and all the other so-called “indicators” of a successful life were there in his life. Anyone who did not know him, but if had to judge him, would assume that my uncle had lived a successful life and must be very happy with his achievements, going by these so-called “success indicators”. However, friends, there is always a difference between being successful and being happy.
A person may be extremely successful in his life, but he need not necessarily be happy, while a person may be very happy with whatever he has achieved in life, but in the eyes of the world, he not necessarily be termed as “successful”. So it is important to distinguish between success and happiness, because only after understanding the meaning and the difference between the two, it will be possible for you to appreciate the importance of both and choose whether you want to be happy or successful, or while being happy, achieve your success. The roads to success are many, but the path you have to choose is the one that makes you happy.
So I asked my supposedly successful uncle, that has achieved all this in life, was he really happy? Did he have any regrets in life? Because regrets are the unfulfilled wishes of a person that depreciate or deplete the taste of success and lead to a deficiency in the happiness quota. Unsurprisingly, my successful uncle replied positively to the fact of having several regrets in life, which till this day make his life incomplete and prevent him from achieving a true state of happiness. I told him to list down five major regrets in his life which he thought he should have avoided. The following is the list of his five major regrets in life which I think we must all know and understand:
- Regret No.1 – He always paid close attention to “What will people say? What will people do? How will people react? What will people think?”. In this caring for opinion of others and their appreciation of his actions, he felt that he had ended up sacrificing his own personal dreams and passions – all that he was passionate about, all that he wanted to do, he let go because he was more concerned about what others would think about his actions. In the process, he let the best years of his life go by abandoning his own personal aspirations and dreams and now when he has achieved so much in life materialistically, it is too late for him to indulge himself in his own dreams because mental and physical abilities have changed the situation.
- Regret No.2 – Right from an early age, when family responsibilities burdened his shoulders and the ambition of materialistic achievements propelled his lifestyle, my uncle had always been a workaholic. He had an 18 hour workday and all the time you could see his mind churning away, planning, plotting, thinking of the next meeting or the next big decision to be taken. He was always running the race of life. His regret no.2 is – Why did I run so much? Why did I work so much? He feels he dedicated his entire life to his work and in the process he sacrificed his time which he could have spent with his family members, his parents, his children – watch them grow up. He feels he wasted his youth, his precious years of life running after materialistic possessions at the cost of ignoring his true wealth i.e. the love of his family members
- Regret No.3 – “Why did I never tell my mother that I love you? Why did I never tell my father that I am sorry for the things I have said and done? Why could I never express my true feelings of love and care to my siblings. Having love and care in your heart is one thing and expressing your feelings to the person is another thing. Often we go through life, tied up in our personal tensions and stressful situations, ignoring the people around us, the ones who matter most and the ones whom we love so dearly. A plain simple sentence like “I love you” takes just a second to express, but it can change the world for the person hearing it. But alas, we often ignore this beautiful fact of life and we all make this common mistake of going through life taking our loved ones for granted and never express our true feelings and emotions to them, until it is too late – then we live with the guilt forever of having missed out on expressing our feelings.
- Regret No.4 – One of my uncle’s biggest regrets, which I could see in his eyes, while he was saying this was missing out on his friends and their friendship. “Why did I let go of my friends and their friendship? Why could I not stay in touch with my friends?”. Agreed that with life’s increasing responsibilities, friends and friendship take a backseat and other things become more of a priority. But always remember, friends are the ones who keep you young at heart – their friendship is genuine with no expectations. Everyone has their own life and their own world and their own struggles, but those few short moments which you spend with your friends, lets you forget all your worries and stress and takes you back in time when all these things were alien to you and all that you knew and did was have a good time with your friends. Friends are important support systems of our life and maintaining friendships is an achievement by itself because they bring out the child in you. Particularly in today’s highly advanced technological age and time, being in touch with anybody, no matter the distance, is a child’s play.
- Regret No.5 – “I couldn’t keep myself happy…….my happiness column was empty and grief column was full”. These were the exact words of my uncle. At this point in life, reality has made him a wise and enlightened man. He has finally realized the difference between success and happiness. Although he had all the materialistic success in the world, internally, he was never happy, never satisfied. The reason was that despite having achieved so much, he knew that the bargain price he was paying by way of sacrificing all the above listed things were the ones which would have made him truly happy. But because he was part of the rat-race, he could not pause and look-back and think whether was success giving him happiness or the other things would make him more happy. So he continued in the rat-race making more money and achieving more success and fame, while his coffers were empty as far as happiness was concerned.
The reason behind my writing this article is that we all need to take a cue from my uncle’s experiences. We need to understand and appreciate that we all go through similar situations in life. Having crossed adolescence, stepping into the early twenties, our life’s focus changes and we become part of the rat race – the race to success, race to money and more money, race to own worldly possessions, race to name and fame. The attractions are many – enough to keep us distracted, and we keep running non-stop. But alas, in the process, we all end up committing the same mistakes that my uncle committed and we all end up with the same regrets at the end of the day when we take stock of our life and what we achieved.
Remember, when you move on, you don’t count your property or your wealth or your possessions, you only see how many people whom you love and cherish, for whom you would do anything, are near you, who care for you and for whom you are more precious than all that you are leaving behind. Only when this number is heavy, you can say that you have truly achieved something in life, otherwise, everything else is a mirage of happiness.
So let us understand, learn and take valuable lessons from this and learn to achieve true happiness and not focus only on success……because as I said, the roads to success are many, but the path you must choose is the one which makes you happy and that will be the only path to true success in all respects.
