The old historic town

Today we went on a tour to the historic town in Santo Domingo with elder Holland, Clayton, Martinez, Zivic and Cornish who was our guide. The Dominican Republic has so much History. Christopher Columbus came here four times. The first University was established in the western hemisphere, the first Cathedral too and anything you can think of was done here first for others to follow.


 Daniel and I have lived here now for five years but this is the first time Daniel got to visit this amazing place because he has been too busy at work  so when we look back at our life, what will we wish we had done? It’s a questions we have all probably heard being posed before but when is the last time you actually stopped and tried to think about what your own answer would be.

Will we wish we had worked more hours each week at the office or will we wish we had taken more time to go and do fun things with our family?  Will we wish we had worked harder on improving our marriage? Will we wish we had done more with our friends? Will we wish we had taken more risks? Will we wish we had tried more things?…. What will you wish you had done?

I think it is a really healthy exercise to go through asking yourself that question now while you still have time to make changes in your life so that someday, when you truly are on your deathbed, you can look back with less regrets on your life.  In fact, I think it is something to revisit at least once each year, if not more, to make sure you are evaluating your life on a regular basis.

I know for Daniel it is the constant worry about work even when he is not in a situation where he actually have to in order to support the family anymore. We are empty nesters but he actually enjoy working and I enjoys accomplishing things, but I need to help him get out of his working too much mode to avoid  that not giving enough of my time to himself, family and friends because I truly don’t want him to get to his deathbed only to regret that he didn’t give his loved ones the proper time and attention. I am home alone a lot and sometimes it would be nice to have him around more.

For me I get sucked into worrying about some things that either I can’t change or that just don’t matter in the big scheme of things. I find that sometimes I can get sucked into wasting emotional energy by worrying about things that are out of my control, so I have to constantly police myself to remember that I don’t want to look back and regret all the time I wasted worrying rather than enjoying every minute of every day.

We all have things that if let unmonitored can easily become bad habits that we will someday regret. So my challenge to everyone today is to take the time to ask yourself what you will wish you had or hadn’t done as you look back at your life from your deathbed someday. Then write them down and commit to working on changing them now while you have been given the gift of life to do so.