The Worst Crime You Can Do To Your Own Self

Do you think when you are on your deathbed taking the last few breaths of your life, you will be satisfied with the way you have lived? A rather grave way of starting a blog but tell me, do you think you will be able to say your life was worth living at the end of it all, no matter what you had gone through?

If you want to answer yes to these questions, then try to live without regret. Remember, better an oops than a what if.

I came across this Wikipedia article that talked about the top five regrets of the dying. According to Bronnie Ware, the five most common regrets shared by people nearing death were:

"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 had stayed in touch with my friends."
"I wish that I had let myself be happier."

Change is an important component in our lives. No one stays the same forever. We evolve and grow as we progress through life but this whole process should be natural. No one should force change upon you. You should not let anyone force change upon you. You should not hide your true self to appease others. You should not change your ways just to ease your company. "How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?" (Richard Siken) Yes, you're murdering your true self by trying to be someone you're not. Don't. Under whatever circumstance, do not. Live your life the way you want to live it- without the agony of false pretences and facades- feeling the joy of getting to be your own true self.

Do not prioritise anything above your own happiness. Make sure to keep away some time for yourself despite the busy schedule you may be stuck in. Do not stop yourself from sharing what you feel. Express. Tell the people you love that you love them. Appreciate everything and everyone. Speak out against things that bother you. Don't bite back your words and try to swallow them down. They might get stuck in your throat, making you heave and gasp all through your life. Keep the people who care for you close to you. At one point in your life, you will realize who the ones worth keeping are. So keep them. Keep them and love them and hang out with them whenever you can. Let yourself be free. Let yourself be happy.

Do not come to a point in your life where you look back and say, "Oh, how I wish I had done things differently back then!"

No.

Be a person filled with experiences- be it uplifting or heartbreaking. But do not be a person filled with regrets. For, in my opinion, that's the worst crime one can commit to oneself.

Comments

The Significance of Jo March's Monologue in 'Little Women'

'Little Women', a classic novel by Louisa May Alcott was adapted into a movie under the direction of Greta Gerwig (one of my absolute favourite directors of all time) in the year 2019. It portrays the lives of four sisters- Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy- navigating love, aspirations, and societal expectations during the Civil War era. The film beautifully captures their individual journeys and the evolving dynamics of sisterhood. Jo March, who is the second of the four March sisters, is the protagonist who aspires with every fibre in her to become a well-acclaimed writer. It's even more interesting how the character of Jo is actually based on Louisa May Alcott herself, making the story sort of a semi-autobiography. Played by Saoirse Ronan, Jo is portrayed as an extremely independent woman, challenging the gender roles and the restraints placed upon women in society. Even though the whole movie is something that strikes the very depths of our hearts, there is one particular monolo...

Lost in the Waves

Beaches have always been a favourite of mine. It's almost like the sea calls my name, beckoning me to embrace its folds. To throw myself into the waters and have no care in the world is something too special to me. Because when I'm neck-deep in there, I'm nothing. My weight against the force of the waves becomes irrelevant. And I'm not just speaking of the weight of my body but of my heart too. In fact, I think my heart is far more heavy than my body ever will be. After all, it is a museum of everything I have loved and lost and loved again. And the artefacts within it weigh down on me- it makes me slump my shoulders and drag my feet while I should be floating around with ease. It makes even the easiest tasks undoable. But the moment I step into the water, I'm free of it all. Maybe it is an inherent nature of mine- to dive into something that is ragingly unpredictable. But rage is so dear to me. Unpredictability is so dear to me. It's something I've grown up...

Embracing My Mundane

Mundane things bore people. It bores me. When something becomes a part of my schedule, I lose my enthusiasm for it. That's how I stopped posting here. Because I couldn't keep up the quality of my content every single day as I grew more and more uninterested. But then today, I attended an event. A programme organised by the Indian Medical Association to educate the common folk about basic first-aid treatments. During this programme, the doctor explaining it all to us mentioned a fact that I had heard once and not given much thought to. But it stuck with me today. It stuck like gum on shoe soles. It refused to leave my head even as I walked out of that hall. When the oxygen supply to the brain is cut off, your body will start to shut down in five minutes. Within the next ten to fifteen minutes, you will be rendered a corpse if you're not given proper medical attention. And I sat there thinking- fifteen minutes . It is the time I take to drag myself off the bed and into the w...

Allow Ann to Babble, Please!

Search This Blog