According to Google, here are some of things on or at or doing which people have claimed that no one on their deathbed ever said they wish they’d spent more time:
- on gurn
- with the Tories
- alone with my computer
- with my family, and less time building supercool high-tech robots to hurtle across the desert in a winner-takes-all race for million-dollar stakes
- watching TV
- hating Nominet
- dusting
- arm-wrestling with Gordon Brown
- in school
- cleaning
- on acting lessons
Along with that happy bouquet of negative assertions, there’s a truckload of the more canonical form to be found:
- at work
- at the office
- in the office
- at the factory
- on my business
But, honestly, nobody on their deathbed ever said “I wish I’d spent more time canvassing examples of the canonical form of the deathbed-wish-I’d-spent-more-time trope”.
(As inspired by the observation, by user drezdn in a metatalk thread of such exceptional size that I am refraining from linking to it out of politeness to you, the credulous reader, that “No one ever says “I wish I would have blogged more” on their death bed.”)
I like to think that there is, in fact, some tremendous academic database of deathbed wishes out there, a sort of JSTOR for the nearly-deceased, and that these claims are not rhetorical boasts but verified statements of fact, produced only after diligent research spurred on by some conversational bottleneck:
Jim: “I just—I mean, should I go camping, or work on my thesis?”
Claire: “Jim, nobody ever said on their death bed, ‘I wish I’d spent more time writing theses’.”
Jim: “Really?”
Claire: “Good point. Let me check the Deathbase here, and…oh. Huh.”
Jim: “Two people said that, actually.”
Claire: “One of them was, wow, shot in the stomach by a mugger when he took a break from writing his thesis to take a walk.”
Jim: “I’m not sure that counts, then.”
Claire: “And the other one was Adolf Hitler.”
Jim: “I think I should go camping.”
Josh,
From an April 14 profile of George Clooney in The New Yorker:
“Clooney is one of a very small group of people who, when asked to consider the most satisfying parts of their lives, begins to describe business meetings.”
I had foolishly thought he’d be thinking on his deathbed about walking down the red carpet with all those hot chicks.
Ha!
I think about death daily I want to reduce that.
That’s how I landed on this blog