So many of us live the way others expect us to, or force our own unrealistic expectations to dictate our lives.  Why, in the words of one man as he was dying “isn’t just being a good person more than enough in life? Why do we depend so much on the material world to validate us?”

Here were the five things dying people most regretted, as told to a palliative care worker over many years.

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself rather than what others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish I’d let myself be happier.

That word happiness is of course central to ethics. Happiness is a choice we make, or to put it as Aristotle might have put it, happiness is a by-product of cultivating certain skills for living well which lead to better and better choices. Central to this cause of happiness is wisdom with courage.

So many people apparently regretted that so much was pretence: pretence at contentment, pretence at fulfilment, when “deep within they longed to laugh properly and have a little silliness in their life again” (Sunday Times 5/2/12).

Much of this resonates with my own experience. I have lost touch with friends, been sucked into a lifestyle which by choice is over-busy. I haven’t spent as much time as I might have creating – for example, writing poetry or doing sculpture (two of my hobbies).

It’s interesting that three rather surprising Greek virtues are wittiness, friendship and magnificence. Magnificence really means buying the best you can wisely afford and spoiling yourself rather than always settling for the cheapest (often proving to be more expensive in the long-run than the best).  And I wish I’d made more effort to get up at dawn and go fishing on Lake Windermere, where I grew up, as in this picture taken last summer.

We need to be brave enough to live the way we want to, and be the person we are, irrespective of what others say.