Dying without regrets

As I get older I have this irrational fear that I’m going to die before I accomplish all of the things I want to do. I have this vision of me on my death bed thinking about all the things I never got to. In this scenario I’m always young, at least by my standards, 50s or 60s, (which is unironically the same age that shoveling snow apparently becomes dangerous), dead after suffering some tragic accident. Dead before it was my time to go, with a lot left to do. That’s my fear.

I think this fear is in part because I have finally realized how long things take to accomplish. That nothing, not anything big or great anyway, magically appears overnight. So when I try to envision how I’m going to accomplish all of my goals I’m realizing that I’ll need as many years as the universe will allow. If I live to a ripe old age, the thing I hope and pray for the most, than I know I’ll have a good shot at figuring it out. But if not, it’s going to be a hard pill to swallow. 

I just finished reading Junglekeepers, by Paul Rosolie, which really drove this point home. The book details the last 20 year of his life, starting out as a young high school kid in Brooklyn, NY, with a passion for getting outdoors, to present day, a founder of Junglekeeprs, an organization responsible for protecting over 110,000 acres in the Amazon jungle. He’s been on that path for 2 decades, and it’s only been in the last few years that he’s been able to gain real traction.

So big things take time, and I have big dreams myself.

I used to think that I could speed up the process, and the best way to accomplish this was to run as fast as possible, in every direction, and work tirelessly even when there was nothing to do. But I’ve realized that, for me at least, that is not a formula for success. I’ve been taking that approach for years, and the progress doesn’t match the effort. By contrast, the more I lean into the idea that accomplishing my goals means accepting that it will take time before I do, the better the progress has been, and the better I feel. But the more I lean in and slow down, the more the fear of my premature death creeps in, freaks me the fuck out, which I try to use as a cue to take a step back, and remind myself: It’s one step after another. Stop trying to leap.

And it really is an irrational fear because once I die, I die. Everything stops and it’s over. I’m not going to be wondering how I could have done more. I’m going to be dead. Thinking will cease. But when I think about death now, while still alive and conscious, the scene that plays out is me looking back over my life shaking my head going, ‘you idiot, why didn’t you do more?’ It’s not easy. And even though it’s irrational, I have to work to protect myself against that unproductive thinking. 

So one thing I’m always doing is looking back 5 or 10 years and asking myself; What is the thing you regret not doing, and what do you wish you would’ve done? Then I try to picture 5 years from now, 10 years, or at any other point in the future, and ask myself the same questions. And the first answer that inevitably comes back is: “Being afraid to start. Being afraid to put my work and ideas out there. Dying with a list of should haves running through my head.” Wondering why I didn’t just get started? Wondering how much further along I’d be. Wondering what stopped me.

And when I look back and examine why I didn’t get started, or why I’m still slow to get moving, I realize it’s for a few reasons. One, I had no idea what I was doing. When I left work in 2018 my only plan was to train aggressively and race competitively in triathlons. And when injury derailed that plan, I had no back up. I was lost. But while that might have delayed me, it’s not what has stopped me. Recently I’ve become aware of a much more impactful reason. I was waiting until I knew what my path was. 

I thought before stating I needed to figure out what the path to my success was going to look like. I thought I needed to see the completed product first. So I spent a lot of time prodding the universe, waiting for an answer. For the past 7 years I’ve been trying to map out a path, instead of just walking. I’ve been studying important books and people who inspire me, searching out new experiences, focused on growth, expecting that somewhere along the lines an answer would fall from the sky and light the path. All the things I thought I should (emphasis because ‘should’ is never a good reason) be doing, and leaving out the most important one; doing. 

That’s not to say that all of that work wasn’t helpful and won’t come in handy, but it’s become clear to me that’s not how it works. I have to just go and let the path direct which way I go. And that’s a new approach for me that I’m working on embracing.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than it is to think your way into a new way of acting.” I heard that quote on a Tim Ferriss episode a couple of weeks back and it stuck with me, for good reason. I didn’t fully understand why though until I started writing this piece. I’d been doing a lot of thinking, not a lot of acting.

And the only way to figure it out is by acting, not thinking. You can’t figure it out if looking through pages in a book, or listening to someone else’s story. Showing up is important, but it is not going to ignite the fire. You have to dip your toe in, take a look under the hood, stick your neck out a little bit, and really be involved if you want to learn what it takes to make something out of nothing. You have to be willing to dedicate 2 decades of your life to visiting the jungle. So that’s what I’m doing now.

Ignoring, to the best of my ability, that internal voice that says “no,” and putting my work and ideas out there, and paying attention to how the universe responds. Because it’s the only way. It’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t, when the only audience is me. It doesn’t matter how much I think I know, there is no set path to follow. There is only the path that you were destined to live.

So I’m trying to get out of the way, let go of some control, and give myself over to my path. Letting it, not me, dictate how this thing will go. And as scary as it is sometimes, in a way it also feels nice. It feels good to surrender and just accept what comes. Acceptance and being willing to surrender to your destiny I think is key. And I think that it is the surest way to have zero regrets when I die, regardless of when that is.