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Five Regrets of the Dying ... by Bronnie Ware

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.   People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, such as denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though... every one of them.   When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
 
1) I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.   This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.   It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
 
2) I wish I didn’t work so hard.   This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.   By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle. 

3) I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.   Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.   We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win. 

4) I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.   Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.   It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships. 

5) I wish that I had let myself be happier.   This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.   When you are on your death-bed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly.   Choose happiness.

Florida Highwaymen-Africian American Artists

The Florida Highwaymen, a group of 26 African-Americans, broke convention to paint beautiful iconic landscapes. Originating in the mid 1950's, an era marked by racism, poverty and brutality, these self-taught entrepreneurs mentored each other while they painted on basic materials like Upson board for canvasses, and crown molding for frames. Local galleries shunned their work, so they peddled their art from car trunks along area roadways, hence their name. Their art freed them from work in citrus groves and labor camps, and they created a body of work that has become not only a timeless collection of a natural environment, but a symbol of determination and belief in oneself.
The surviving Highwaymen, now in their sixties and seventies, are an important chapter in America’s culture and history, indeed, a National Treasure. Their self-determination in the face of adversity remains an important story of perseverance, inspiration and creativity.

The Highwaymen are a group of African American artists who, against all odds, became successful selling landscape paintings in Florida when Jim Crow laws prohibited most blacks from realizing their dreams. Shunned by local art galleries, the artists traveled along highways throughout Florida selling their work from the trunks of their cars or by going door-to-door in white neighborhoods and businesses.

A. E. ''Beanie" Backus, an established white regional landscape artist, mentored the first two Highwaymen artists, Harold Newton and Alfred Hair. Newton was already a painter but after seeing Backus' works he switched from painting religious scenes to painting landscapes, and Hair was one of Backus' students. Several years after taking his first lessons from Backus and anxious to get started, Hair combined what he had learned from Backus and Harold Newton and started a business creating and selling art quickly. Generous and charismatic, Hair taught other young blacks to paint with his fast painting technique.

They painted fast and furiously, sometimes together in someone's backyard or home studio, and occasionally in the natural environment. By 1970, when many of the artists were make a living painting, Hair was killed. Without his enthusiasm and energy, some of the artists discontinued painting, and as time went on, others stopped due to lack of sales.

In 1995, Jim Fitch, acquisition agent for the Florida Masters Collection and founder of the Museum of Florida Art and Culture stirred up interest in the loosely connected group by naming them the Highwaymen and telling their story. Collectors started searching the state for their art. Suddenly people were checking their attics and garages for old dusty landscape paintings as renewed interest in the Highwaymen gained a new momentum that is continuing.

Most of the Highwaymen lived in Fort Pierce or other nearby small towns during the 1950's. Strictly enforced state laws segregated whites and blacks. Although the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown vs Board of Education declared that states could no longer segregate their schools, and boycotts and protests had raised the public consciousness, it would be another ten years before the Civil Rights Act.

For the most part, blacks had little opportunity for advancement and lived substandard to the white community. So when Alfred Hair graduated from high school in 1957, he had the choice of hoping to get day work in the citrus groves or tomato fields or, maybe if he was lucky, finding a steady job performing menial tasks at a local packinghouse. Hair rejected the predictable path, and in his desire to be a millionaire by age 35, chose painting as a means to escape poverty.

Hair and his associates flourished during the 1960's when racial tensions across the country often resulted in violence. Although small in comparison to larger cities such as Los Angeles, Fort Pierce experienced riots and burnings in Blacktown. Yet the Highwaymen still managed to travel into white neighborhoods without incident. The group may have been making more money and raising their personal standard of living, but they were still living in Blacktown because there was nowhere else they could live in Fort Pierce.

The Highwaymen created an unprecedented 150,000 to 200,000 paintings in about a thirty-year period. They charged $25 to $35 for each framed piece, making it possible for Floridians and tourists, who normally didn't buy original art, own their own affordable oil paintings. Today, many collectors purchase because of the connection they feel to Florida's beaches, hammocks, big skies, and winding rivers that these paintings represent. Living at a time when much of Florida's natural landscape is giving way to development has made the Highwaymen paintings more important for many people.

The Highwaymen's history has become as important as the groups' art because their story relates the universal qualities needed for success. Certainly, Alfred Hair demonstrated entrepreneurship and leadership, but other artists showed a willingness to learn, an ability to share their knowledge, and then break out of the mold segregation had imposed upon them. Their ability to achieve as artists resulted in the group's induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004.