When Death Reveals Regrets to Teach Me How to Live in Love

Aug 23

Since getting home from backpacking a little of a week ago, I’ve been reflecting and integrating as I can. If you missed what I’ve been up to this month, you can read about my heading out on a soul quest - it’s been wild ride.

Part of the quest was 4 days of solo fasting (only water to drink) time. I knew that would be challenging all on its own. Combine that with torrential mountain thunderstorms, hail, swaying old trees surrounding me to really place the inner fears smack out in front to be faced.

What if lightening hits? Am I near the tallest tree? Where are the rotten trees? What if my shelter is beat down by rain and hail? What animal is in the dark near me but I can’t see? How long will the full moon be covered by clouds? What was that noise? Do mosquitoes come out at night? Do I have more clothes to layer on?

As those questions strutted mockingly across my mind, I wrote…

*****

Night 2 Solo - Living Love Revealed By My Regrets

The storm is loud and surrounds me.
It blows chills into my bones.
My heart beats fast.

Even the wasp stuck under the tarp
Wants a way out of this storm
Yet clings to the edge a bit longer.

If I were to die now,
I would have so many regrets.
What’s the wasp’s contrition?

I did not love the world fiercely enough.
I did not make each day matter.
I did not connect deeply and sincerely.
I did not have patience with my loves.
I did not hug and kiss enough.
I did not make love enough.
I did not bow down to soil.
I did not praise the sky and stars.
I did not savor each raspberry and tomato.
I did not listen deeply and sacredly.
I did not offer my heart fully.
I did not apologize often enough.
I did not ask permission and wait for an answer.
I did not respect but attempted control.
I did not welcome the ease of loving.
I did not welcome love universal.
I want to live so that I can erase each and every one of those regrets.

*****

I wrote those regrets as I watched my fear-based questions and stared (begrudgingly) directly into my dark night of soul and storm. The experience showed me what I was missing out on by holding myself back out of fear and protection no longer needed or called for in these instance as a whole adult.

As I sat in the dark and having sat through 2 days of harsh, bone-chilling storms that occur up at 10,000 ft in the mountain valleys, I recalled this line from a Rilke poem:

“You are not surprised at the force of the storm - you have seen it growing.”*

That was true. I had seen the storm of my soul growing asking me to release the fears that clung onto my former self - the self of who I was when I left academia - the self who identified with a job rather than my soul work. The fears who kept me out of love. Kept me out of living a life worth loving. I lived a life of small love and small aliveness. I grieved and buried that Tamara that night so that soul-aligned Tamara can practice all the days forward - how to love fully all the days I’m blessed to be alive with my loves.

What if we asked ourselves, if I were faced with death today, what would I regret?
And then make a choice that eliminates or erodes that regret and moves to the opposite - towards fearless and abundant love!

What would your regret list be and how do you want to shift your daily living and loving?

Love fully and deeply, my friends!

*(Read the rest of Rilke’s Onto a Vast Plain)