Food for thought….
Most people utter one of four common phrases on their deathbeds, according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author and oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee during a commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania last week. Each of the phrases offers an important lesson for leading a fulfilling and successful life, Mukherjee said.
The phrases are:
I want to tell you that I love you.
I want to tell you that I forgive you.
Would you tell me that you love me?
Would you give me your forgiveness?
People who know they’re dying often express some variation of one of those four themes — indicating that they waited until it was late to show their appreciation for others or right their interpersonal wrongs, said Mukherjee, author of the award-winning 2011 nonfiction book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.”
Instead, they harbored grudges, lived with unresolved guilt or spent years being too afraid to be vulnerable, Mukherjee explained. The ensuing remorse, stress, poor mental health and even hormonal and immune imbalances can stunt your personal and professional growth, neurobehavioral scientist J. Kim Penberthy wrote in a 2022 University of Virginia blog post.
“Love and forgiveness, death and transition. Waiting [to express yourself] merely delays the inevitable,” said Mukherjee, adding that young people should “take this seriously. You’re living in a world where love and forgiveness have become meaningless, outdated platitudes. … They’re words people have learned to laugh at.”
Source: NBC San Diego
See also “Forgiving others is good for our mental health“.
~E
I guess in many instances this is the very reason that God gives so many of us many decades on Earth, so that we can learn the wisdom of being able to love and forgive others–and accept love and forgiveness from others.