Living without regrets

What can make some people to think that the only way to success is through constant striving? By the way, what is striving? According to the Oxford dictionary, striving means to “make great efforts to achieve or obtain something”. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong with making “great efforts” to achieve whatever you desire in life. 

Within the context of this short discussion, I will define striving as an inordinate ambition to achieve something at all cost. In this context, people pursue success with little consideration for the feelings of the people around them. To them, the end justifies the means. By the time they get to that ‘end’, the significant people around them would no longer be there. They would have moved on.

A friend recently told me a sad story. His mother had just died. He was unable to show how much he really loved her. I asked how. He said for over a period of ten years, he had been running his business with little time to see her. He had been running from one business contract to another. He had little time to spend with his mother despite her repeated requests. I asked him what his inability to show how much he loved his mother made him feel. He said he felt like a failure. I asked what made the feeling so bad for him. He said he would now live the rest of his life with regrets and a feeling inner guilt. I asked him what he could do to overcome the regret and guilt. He said noting. I told him he was right to feel regretful and be guilty but that he would also be right to find a reason to forgive himself. I left him with a task of finding just one reason why he must forgive himself, leave the past behind him and move on to the future.

It turned out that the reason for his strong desire to succeed in life at all cost was to prove a point to his mother. He wanted to show his mother that he could succeed and become somebody in life. He explained that his mother used to tell him repeatedly as a young boy that he would amount to nothing in life. He said he consequently grew up to adulthood believing that he could never amount to anything. He was in his late thirty when things started to change and he began to realise that he did not have to stick to his old belief. He started to get hungry for success and fame

One business opportunity led to another and by the time he was fifty years old, his life had changed dramatically. He had become financially independent. He owned one of the most successful ICT companies in his country with his annual turnover running into several millions of pounds. He made sure his mother lacked nothing by way of material and other comfortable things money could buy, including two Mercedes Benz, a luxuriously furnished house in the best neighbourhood and an assortment of house-helps catering for every area of her life.  Even though she was happy and very proud of her son’s achievements, she longed to see her son visiting her more regularly in their hometown some four hundred miles from the city. He also longed to see his beloved mother at least once a month. However, business meetings regularly took him around the globe. He had very little time to be with her.

For over one year, his mother had been pestering him with requests to come and spend a couple of days with her. She seemed to be desperate for the meeting. After a lot of pressure, he promised to visit her but that would be after his next business trip.

One evening, his mother telephoned him. She told her son that she would like to see him very urgently and for a very important family matter. His aides had however already booked his flight ticked to China. He was due to attend a meeting for a groundbreaking contract deal. The news of the contract had even appeared on both national and international news network. There was no way he could miss his flight. His mother said although she had heard about the meeting, but still desired to see her son before he travelled. He explained his situation to his mother and apologised for his inability to visit him immediately as requested. His conversation with his mother was brief but very emotional. As there were other people waiting to see him that evening for other sundry business related matters, he could not stay on the phone with his mother for too long. That conversation was the last they had together as mother and son.  She died on the day he returned from his trip to China. His money could not buy his mother’s love. She wanted him, not his money.