“I want to die without regrets.”
For years, I had this thought. For years, I’d wince when I thought it. Why? Because if I’d died, I would’ve died with regrets.
Why are we driven toward this end-of-life peace? It’s a common fear. It’s why I’ve made many of my decisions. Yet, why does it matter, if at the very end, we find peace with what’s happened decades ago?
I don’t know. That’s not in my purview. But, I do know what regret feels like. You just know. And when regret is gone, you just know that too.
After I dropped my resignation letter into the mailbox, ending my eight-year run of inauthenticity, I stood there on the sidewalk in an altogether different universe than I’d inhabited seconds before. I was in the universe of integrity. I was one with the world again. I just knew. I knew I’d done what I was supposed to do. I couldn’t justify it rationally—I had $200,000 in loans, was recently married, and gave up a $400,000 career—but I’d lived by practicality for so long and had lived inside regret for so many years, that it didn’t matter. I just knew leaving medicine was the next right step in my life. And that next right step rectified years of betrayal to my soul. If I’d accomplished anything, I was just who I was again, at last, without regrets.
[convertkit form=3846822]
Sunday night, my wife and I watched The Devil Wears Prada. And damn, I really enjoyed that movie. There’s naïveté, compromise, selling out, inauthenticity, conflict, reconciliation, and integrity. That movie has it all.
Andrea, Anne Hathaway’s character, is a wannabe journalist who believes she can shortcut her way to the writer’s life by climbing the corporate ladder of the fashion world. At first, the shoe fits. But gradually, that compromise transforms her into the person she hates (her boss, played mercilessly by Meryl Streep). Ultimately, she recognizes her mistakes, judges herself honestly, and embarks on her dream with no illusions of a career in fashion.
Here’s what resonated most for me: she only knows who she is after the mistake and after the compromise, because of her failure to uphold her personal integrity. If she’d had stayed in fashion, further compromising her soul, inevitable regret would await. We just know it. But when she commits to her authentic journalism calling, learning from her inauthenticity, she carries with her the full weight of her identity, including her mistakes. As the film closes, Andrea is mature, whole, and regret-free, we just know it. The whole ordeal has made her.
Therein lies our best shot at a life without regrets. We know we will make mistakes. We expect we will have regrets. We will have the opportunity to use our regrets as fuel to restore wholeness to our lives. Then, wiser, the whole ordeal will have been worth it, and we can earn our end-of-life peace.
If you’d like to join my newsletter, where I send one encouraging email on Friday morning, join our community here. Let’s go build a life we love.
