My grandfather died when he was 100 years old. He was an incredible man. Although he was confined to a wheelchair for the last few years of his life, his mind was sharp right up until the end.
I was sitting with him one day when he was around 95. My grandmother, his wife, had died a few years earlier and although he had friends and family, he was left for much of the day on his own, lost in his thoughts.
One day, whilst looking out the window into the garden of the nursing home, he said something exceptionally powerful to me, something which shaped me and how I live, and will live, the rest of my life. It was late afternoon, the shadows were beginning to lengthen across the lawn, the evening chorus of crickets and other African insects started their nightly concert, when, breaking the silence of contemplation, my grandfather said to me “You don’t want to live an ‘I should have’ life.”
After my prompt for clarification he continued;
“You don’t want to live a life that when you get to my age you look back and think to yourself ‘I should have traveled more, I should have told my wife more often how much I love her, I should have spent more time with friends, I should have worried less what people think of me.’ You can make sure you live your life now in such a way that when you get to my age you can look back in satisfaction at all the things you accomplished and experienced.”
Awesome. A moment when a man with the wisdom of 95 years was taking his own regrets and making sure they weren’t totally for nothing, using them to make sure his progeny would not experience the same thing he was experiencing, making sure that I live my life to the fullest and achieve everything I can in life. Awesome.
I left the room with a new resolve to fully experience life, to live for the moment, to not hold myself back with self-doubt and fear, to just get out there and achieve amazing things. At first my mind turned to travel, experiencing the world, martial arts training, adventure activities and survival experiences.
It didn’t take long though for me to realise that although these things are definitely remarkable and character building activities, they wouldn’t in themselves lead to true fulfillment and depth and meaning in life. I noticed that the times I felt my best, most fulfilled and actualized were the times when I was there for other people. We’ve all felt it. Being there for a friend when they are going through difficult times, volunteering with kids or the elderly, even things as simple as returning a wallet or sunglasses to the person in front of you who dropped them on the busy city streets. It is by serving and connecting with other people who need our time, attention and love, that we can truly tap into what it means to live a life which we can look back on with no regrets, a life really worth living that we can use as an example to for our own grand-kids when they are sitting with us looking out the window at the sunset of our lives …
Dov Ber Cohen is Justifi's Director of Education. For more info, see his profile here.