Business Day – 19 NOVEMBER 2020 – BRIGHT KHUMALO
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent her career in palliative care, looking after people with very little time left on Earth.
She has had the privilege of speaking with these people about things that make life worth living, as well as what they would have done differently. Ware summarises their top five regrets in her blog which was turned into a book titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She found that these were:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, and not the life that others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in better touch with my friends.
- I wish I had let myself be happier.
The thing that stands out for me is that there’s no mention of money and the only mention of work is to say that especially male patients wish they had done less of it. A lot of us in life could be chasing the wrong dream, setting the wrong goals and operating from a wrong-headed set of priorities.
There is something about the passing of a loved one that reminds you of your own mortality, which compels you to make the most of each day; something I experienced at the passing of my grandmother. When you evaluate your life as it draws to a close, I’m willing to bet you will never regret the money you didn’t make. However, you may well regret time spent chasing a counterfeit notion of happiness.
It can be weirdly unsettling to learn that money isn’t everything. As much as we whine about it, having the physical embodiment of happiness is kind of nice. We can hold it, save it, get more of it; all while mistakenly thinking that getting paid is how we arrive or find happiness in life.
Realising that money does not equate to meaning can leave us with a sense of groundlessness. Once we’ve stripped away that faulty foundation, we’re able to replace it with things that lead to a less evanescent feeling of happiness. Breaking this overreliance on money as a substitute for real joy is a great first step. However, I wanted to talk about a few other concrete actions we could take once we’ve had this important realisation. First, we need to spend money in ways that matter. Let’s be realistic. Money does matter. We all need money. But you can spend it in ways that are more or less conducive to building happiness.
Let’s be balanced in the way we talk about and think about money. It’s not the key to happiness, but it’s not nothing. A lot of our troubles with money stem from the way we spend it. We think buying things will make us happy. We engage in retail therapy, which is quickly followed by regret at being overextended. Before we know it, we’re surrounded by the relics of our discontent. The things we bought become constant reminders we’re not happy, as we read in Fight Club: the things we own end up owning us.
So instead of amassing junk, let’s spend our money on things of real value, and take the time to savour these new purchases. Use your money to invest in a dream, to take a little time off to travel, learn a new language, give charitably and experience the joy of watching those less fortunate benefit from your benevolence.
Finally, spend money on special experiences; Ware’s research says they are far more lasting than buying stuff. It’s true money doesn’t buy happiness, but it can facilitate it if we approach it correctly.
Next, we need to find a new benchmark to measure our self-worth. Part of the appeal of money is that it becomes a barometer for joy, happiness, fulfilment, all of these are abstractions hard to get our hands around.
Take things that really will make you happy and try to come up with indicators for those instead. Maybe you enjoy running and could set a goal to complete three new marathons by the end of the summer. The impulse to measure happiness is a natural and good one. Let’s just make sure we’re using a yardstick that actually delivers on its promises.