What is it that people do when they know…

What is it that people do when they know their days are numbered? They look back with a regret at time foolishly wasted. They wonder why they didn’t spend more time with family and friends.

— from The Landing (Death) · Hope, Not Fear by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

In the book

The plan somehow never includes time for the surfing lesson, or learning the guitar, or writing the music, or simply playing with the dog — and then one day we look back and wonder why. People at the end almost always look back with regret at hours foolishly wasted, wondering why they did not spend more of them with the people they loved and on the work that was theirs to do. Part of why we look away is that living is, strangely, harder than dying — dying is a single passive surrender, while living demands constant attention and management, and can hurt far more. […] In all my years I have never once met a person near the end of the flight who wished they had spent more hours being busy. I have met many who wished they had spent more time with the people in their formation, and on the purpose they were given. The whole of a life, when it is finally tallied, is simply the honest sum of where the hours actually went — not where you meant them to go. — The Landing (Death)

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