[flacebo]

I don't disagree with your point, but for the longest time I took deathbed wisdom as some ultimate truth.

However, one time it occured to me that maybe a dying person's regrets are not the way you should live your life. They didn't get infinite wisdom just because they're dying, and also the point of life is not that to be happy about your life and choices in your last couple of hours/days.

I'm not saying you should dismiss everything they say, but to take it for what it is: the thoughts of a mind heavily influenced by dying.

[kstenerud]

I've found that the dying tend to focus on the last decade or so of their life with newfound clarity now that the daily material worries are trivial by comparison, and spend a fair bit of time thinking about how empty or full their life was depending on how they lived. The regrets inevitably revolve around relationships, distantly followed by accomplishments.

Its not about being satisfied or not with your choices on your deathbed, so much as realizing on your deathbed that you've been miserable due to how you've lived, and have been too preoccupied or angry or fearful to pay any heed and make changes while you still had the chance.

The first bout one has with this is when someone you know well dies, and you find yourself thinking about what could have been said or done but cannot now. That's probably also why the realization generally doesn't happen until later in life...

[hiq]

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak%E2%80%93end_rule

"The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience."

[dwroberts]

This reminds me of the Alan Watts stuff about life being like music - ie not all about some important crescendo at the end, but the stuff happening in the middle.