Reconciling with One’s Past

During the latter years, looking back on life naturally occurs – and this can then also become a time to reconcile with one’s past.

First, it is an opportunity to be deeply grateful for one’s life experiences, as well as appreciative of spiritual understanding gained.

Secondly, one can heal and transform suffering and unfinished business – for oneself and also in relation to family, friends, and others.

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Reconciling with One’s Present Life

In quietly and meditatively reflecting on life, the latter years can be a time when many profound and wonderful insights may emerge about one’s present life.

One can also gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of one’s existence as part of the magnificent cosmos.

In this way, we can become more reconciled — and even achieve a lasting peace — with the life that we are presently living.

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Regret

Many of those we have accompanied during their last days and hours died in relative peace. Some died with considerable regret. 

The most common theme of regret was a feeling that the person had given their life away to a job they did not care about instead of toward some work they loved. People wished they had gotten a job for the love of it and not for the money. One lawyer said he wished he had gotten into furniture design — he loved the smooth even beat of his heart at the whirring lathe. Another — a very successful Broadway set designer, who was also autistic — wished he had become an accountant because the numbers helped straighten his mind. 

The second most common area of regret had to do with relationships. Some wished they had gotten a divorce instead of staying with their partner out of fear and uncertainty. Others wished they had gotten married. Some wished they had been different or better parents. More than a few wished they had put more work into opening their heart and been less stubborn, less self-protective. Many wished they had spent more time playing, making love, or serving the needs of others.

Source: Levine, Stephen and Ondrea. “Don’t Wait for Tomorrow: Six Meditations on Death and Dying” in Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Edited and introduced by Koshin Paley Ellison and Matt Weingast. Wisdom Publications, 2016.

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Dealing with Regrets

As one looks back, regrets may well arise. How do we deal with them? We inevitably ask: How could it have been otherwise?

“Could it really have been otherwise? No, it’s what happened, and that’s the inner teaching of regret. Regret is the ego trying to distort what is unchangeable, and we have various words for how that happens. One of them is denial, which is very powerful. …

I think transforming regret into appreciation is one of the main values of meditation. … That’s one of the main things that happens because when you meditate, regret starts to surface and you start to think about your life.

Meditation neutralizes denial after a while and opens up the circuits and things start to flow in, and then you begin to realize that regret is a distortion of what’s real.

What’s real is that this is your life, and it happened, and there’s no going back. There’s only altering your attitude and perception about it so that you can go forward. So I think that regret looks like one of aging’s challenges, but actually it’s also an opportunity.”

Source: From an interview with Lewis Richmond in Tricycle Magazine in an article entitled “Aging as a Spiritual Practice” (Spring 2012).

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Forgiveness

Forgiveness can finish unfinished business. But it takes a while to cultivate the openness of heart necessary to allow a lifetime’s armoring to gradually disintegrate — to allow the fist around the heart to loosen and let go of unattended sorrows. Sometimes in the course of listening to a loved one’s life review, elements of unfinished business may surface and make themselves vulnerable to healing. 

Sometimes it can help to write a letter about one’s unfinished business as a way of untangling the loose ends over which we so often trip. We have seen people then burn that letter as a way to let go, forgive, or say goodbye. 

Don’t wait for death to remind you to live. Death is a perfect mirror for life. It clarifies priorities. It will point out the way to the heart: compassion and loving-kindness, generosity and courage. 

In response to the Dalai Lama asking me what I was working on, I told him I was writing a book called A Year to Live about preparing for death by thoroughly living. He asked, “Would that be skillful with the American consciousness?” I told him that of the thousands of terminally ill people we worked with, received phone calls from, and exchanged letters with, none had ever chosen to grab a bottle of tequila and a sex partner and head for the hills. He laughed and shook his head. “Very good, very good,” he said. “Preparing for death has for millennia been recommended as a precise teaching and practice for cultivating wisdom and mercy.”

Source: Levine, Stephen and Ondrea. “Don’t Wait for Tomorrow: Six Meditations on Death and Dying” in Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Edited and introduced by Koshin Paley Ellison and Matt Weingast. Wisdom Publications, 2016.

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