Having a near-death experience taught me how to live better...

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After an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, Georgina Scull spoke to people around the world facing death – and discovered the regrets they want us all to learn from. I’m not sure I ever fully appreciated my life until I nearly lost it. In fact, I’m sure I didn’t. On the surface everything was good. I was married and living overseas with our two-year-old daughter. There was food on the table and a roof over our heads, but it felt as if I was drifting – constantly waiting for my real life to start. And then, at 37, I had an ectopic pregnancy, which ruptured and I nearly died.

That was 10 years ago. It should have been the start of my second chance. The jolt to get me going. But, I’m afraid it wasn’t. I was alive, but I still wasn’t really living. I still seemed to be stuck in all the things I hadn’t done over the years, rather than enjoying all the things that I did. As the days and weeks passed, my regrets just grew.

I wanted to find out the answers to all of these questions, because I wanted to live differently. I didn’t want to be stuck any more. I wanted to work out what we regret and how we could all learn to regret a little bit less. So, after yet more drift, we moved back to the UK and I decided to face it head on. I decided that rather than look to myself for answers, I would look outward and listen to other people facing their own mortality. Not really people who were recovering from a near-death experience like me, but people who were living with a terminal or life-limiting illness, or were over the age of 70. People who wanted to talk about the choices they’d made and the things they wanted the rest of us to realise before it was too late.






https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...s-face-regrets