Meditation for Thursday 13 November 2025
Palliative Care nurse Bonnie Ware has identified these top five regrets of her end-of-life patients.
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This is about examining what gives us meaning and purpose in life. Michelle Obama wrote this about Barack a short time after they first met……….
“His inborn confidence was admirable but honestly try living with it. For me, co-existing with Barack’s strong sense of purpose, sleeping in the same bed with it, sitting at the breakfast table with it was something to which I had to adjust, not because he flaunted it but because it was so alive”
Later Michelle writes in her journal….
“ Somehow, in all my years of schooling, I hadn’t managed to think through my own passions and how they might match up with work I found meaningful.”
Michelle is ruminating about purpose, and purpose is found when we cultivate Presence in our life.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
When work becomes all consuming to the exclusion of other parts of our life.
- I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.
In the state of Presence, we honour our feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with friends.
Social Connections are best cultivated with Presence.
- I wish I had let myself be happier.
Taking time to realise what’s important leads us to living more in the Present.
Let us now take time to place ourselves in the NOW, in the Present Moment as we meditate for ourselves and for others……
Meditation
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- The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departed” by Bonnie Ware (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2012)
- “Becoming” by Michelle Obama, (New York: Crown, 2018.)
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