When we feel our life has been wasted

The Christian Science Monitor

"I Realize now my life has been wasted," a friend tearfully told me. A sudden illness had brought him face to face with mortality, and, looking back over his life, he realized he'd barely lived. Although he didn't realize it, he was in a profound state of grief—grief over the life he'd never lived, the life that might have been.

He grieved that he'd spent his whole life accumulating money, instead of pursuing a genuine talent he had in art. He grieved over never having had children and over a marriage that was mostly an armed truce. He grieved over a life that had few friends and fewer joys. And now, facing the twilight of his life, he despaired.

I took my friend's hand and tried to comfort him. Maybe this act of reaching out did more than anything I said that day. He brightened a bit and thanked me for listening. He said he would endure, somehow.

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