Chapter 3: The Grief of the Disposable Man

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Chapter 3: The Grief of the Disposable Man

‘‘Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.’’

- Jonathan Larson –

‘‘Live your life without regrets’’ is an easy statement to make, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds to implement it into one’s own life. In this chapter, we will be going through ten of the most common regrets expressed by the individuals who were on the brink of death before passing away, and we’ll see how it relates to the topic of the disposable man.

1- ‘‘I wish I lived for myself more.’’ In her bestselling book ‘‘The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying’’ Bronnie Ware, a palliative nurse from Australia, compiled the most frequent regrets her patients expressed before dying. The most common sorrow that Bronnie Ware’s patients expressed was that most of their dreams were unfulfilled.

2- ‘‘I wish I didn’t work so hard.’’ Working is essential for living, but too many men lose their life trying to earn that extra dollar. And for what? Chances are good that in the end, your most precious memories won’t be about your work.

3- ‘‘I wish I didn’t hold back my feelings.’’ Men are conditioned since childhood to become stoic machines, but in the end it very well lead to a resentful existence and it may even manifest itself in mental illness over time.

4- ‘‘I wish I stayed in touch.’’ People tend to have a rich social life when they are young, but there is a focal point in their life when this changes drastically. For a lot of people, this stage happens with marriage and children, and sadly, it tends not to revert back.

5- ‘‘I wish I was happier.’’ Living a fulfilling life is the most important thing, don’t you agree? If it isn’t, then what are we living for?

6- ‘‘I wish I cared less about what others think.’’ Worrying too much about others is a good plan if you want to be taken advantage of. Live your truth, and don’t worry about what others think of you.

7- ‘‘I wish I didn’t worry so much.’’ At the end of your life, remembering your unpaid bills and debts, what other people think of you, how much money you have, and everything else you usually worry about won’t really matter. Will you get dragged down by numerous burdens or will you let go of your fears and rise to the many challenges that life has to offers before it’s too late?

8- ‘‘I wish I took better care of myself.’’ If you don’t have your health, you also don’t have freedom. Taking care of yourself is one of the most crucial things you can do to have a great life.

9- ‘‘I wish I didn’t take life for granted.’’ Men are brimming with energy and passion in their youth, but that doesn’t last forever. We may think of ourselves as indestructible, but that is not the case. Sometimes it is important to enjoy the simple details of life as much as we can, while we still can.

10- ‘‘I wish I lived in the now.’’ Most people long for a future that hasn’t happened yet or reminisce about the past, hoping that they could either bring it back or change it. Very few live in the moment that is unravelling right before their eyes.

When we summarize the most common regrets of the dying, we can see that they lived for others instead of themselves, and they dedicated a significant portion of their time to their work. They closed off their emotions, and became stoic, and lost contact with their friends. Since they wished they were happy, it means that their life was bitter. We also know that they cared too much about what others thought and that they didn’t take care of themselves. They took their life for granted and did not live in the present.

Maybe it’s just me, but the first thing that came to my mind when reading about these ten regrets was the picture of an old man who sacrificed his life goals, health, social life, and dreams to protect and provide for others.

In all honesty, can you say that all of these regrets fit the life of a woman? Let’s look at all these points again and see why most of them apply more toward men’s lives than women’s.

1- ‘‘I wish I lived for myself more.’’ In all fairness, although I think that this point should go to men, because male love is sacrificial, while female love isn’t, I could also give this one to both sexes. While men give up many things to take care of women, women also forfeit parts of their lives for their children.

2- ``I wish I didn’t work so hard``. This one almost exclusively applies to men. According to Bronnie Ware this regret came out from every male palliative patient that she nursed (and only from a few of her female patients).

According to the study ‘‘Overwork and the Slow Convergence in the Gender Gap in Wages’’ done by Youngjoo Cha, Indiana University Kim A. and Weeden, Cornell University, in 2000, 19% of men worked 50 hours or more per week, compared to only 7% of women. The researchers suggested that women are less likely to enter a job that demands to overtime in addition to staying in it.

According to Statistic Canada, on average, women usually worked fewer weekly hours when compared to men at their main job (33.2 hours for women versus 39.5 hours for men, in 2007). Although all age groups follow this trend, the gap between men's and women's hours was higher for older people.

I also searched for a long time to find a credible study that could help me find the real-time difference spent on house chores for men vs. women, but I faced a significant hurdle there. In every study that I examined, housework was defined as “core chores,” or routine housework that people do not enjoy doing such as washing dishes, laundry, vacuuming floors and dusting. Other activities such as home repairs and renovations, mowing the lawn, and shoveling snow were not included in the study. Apparently, shoveling snow is enjoyable and thus should not count as a chore. Others task like throwing the garbage out, mowing the lawn, fixing a clogged toilet, grouting, painting a room, changing the car’s oil, or crawling through the musty crawl space to repair a leaky pipe weren’t counted as household chores either. As a result, the men’s chores get comparatively short when compared to those of women. But, even when men’s additional tasks like home repairs aren’t taken into consideration, while women’s chores are taken into account, men still end up working close to two hours more than women per week.

Let’s face it, men have always worked harder and will always work more than women. I do not mean to be demeaning to women, but this fact is also a part of our biology. Women have harder times handling prolonged exposure to stress compared to men because of our endocrine system.

The adrenals glands are the glands situated above the kidneys that regulate our stress responses and modulate both metabolism and energy levels. Even when working under comparable environmental stresses, a woman’s adrenal glands will work harder than a man’s.

The human body secretes cortisol (stress hormone) and testosterone in order to handle any task that requires continued focus or physical labor. Those two hormones are essential components that enable extended bouts of concentration or strenuous sessions of physical activities.

These adrenal glands are responsible for the production of cortisol; that is true for both men and women. The difference, though, is that while men’s testes secrete testosterone, women’s testosterone is mainly generated by their adrenals glands (the ovaries do secrete a certain amount of testosterone, but most of it is immediately refined into estrogen). Women’s adrenal glands have to produce both cortisol and testosterone, while men’s adrenal glands do not have to make testosterone (they do make a slight, negligible amount), and comparatively speaking, women’s adrenal glands are working on double-duty. This is, of course, grossly over-simplifying very complex matters, but it depicts the essential biological realities.

Furthermore, women’s adrenals are also impacted by the hormonal imbalances from the menstrual cycle, which further increases the burden they must endure.

Like any other gland or organ in the body, they can become exhausted, especially when a person is exposed to environmental stressors for long periods of time. Because of the difference in our endocrine system, women get exhausted more quickly than men, thus falling more easily into a state known as adrenal fatigue when they work too much. For that simple reason, when given similar tasks and the same number of working hours, women will reach a state of ‘‘burnout’’ faster than a man. Most women must intuitively know this fact, as they naturally gravitate towards roles where they work less than men.

Thus, we can conclude that the second most frequent affliction conveyed by Bronnie Ware's patients is plaguing men’s live more than it is plaguing women’s live.

3- ‘‘I wish I didn’t hold back my feelings.’’ Very few women could say that statement while remaining credible. This one is pretty self-explanatory. We saw in the first chapter how men quickly learn to repress their emotions and how they are trained to be disposable. The third regret in Bronnie Ware’s book goes to men without hesitation.

4- ‘‘I wish I stayed in touch.’’ Both men and women tend to lose friends as they get older; I can see this going both ways.

5- ‘‘I wish I was happier.’’ This one could also apply to both men and women, but here is why it applies a lot more to men’s lives.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Canada), men are more likely than women to use almost all types of illicit drugs, and illegal drug use is more likely to result in emergency hospital visits or overdose deaths for men. For most age groups, men have higher rates of dependence on illicit drugs and alcohol than women. Women typically begin using substances later than men do, they are strongly influenced by spouses or boyfriends to use, and they enter treatment earlier during the course of their dependence than men do.

In other words, men tend to self-medicate more than women.

Typical studies on depression often conclude that women are twice as likely to have depression as men of the same age group.

Since approximately 50% of all adults experiencing symptoms of depression will not talk to a doctor or seek help for it, it also suggests that women are over diagnosed while men are under diagnosed.

To prove my point, I refer to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry on October 2013, titled ‘‘The Experience of Symptoms of Depression in Men vs Women’’ done by Lisa A. Martin, Harold W. Neighbors, and Derek M. Griffith. They found that ‘‘male depression’’ is actually more frequent than ‘‘female depression.’’

The survey included 3,310 women and 2,382 men and aimed to explore whether sex disparities in depression rates disappeared when other symptoms besides conventional depression symptoms were considered. ‘‘Male depression’’ was enlarged to encompass behaviors of anger attacks/aggression, substance abuse, and risk-taking behavior, which most studies fail to acknowledge as depression. The researchers found a higher prevalence of depression in men (26.3%) than in women (21.9%). These results suggest that relying only on men's disclosure of traditional symptoms could lead to an underdiagnosis of depression in men.

Men do not readily report their weaknesses and are often under diagnosed.

Finally, we saw in the last chapter that men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide compared to women. We also saw that men’s life expectancy is five to seven years shorter than that of women’s and that it’s not a biological phenomenon, but a question of lifestyle.

To summarize, men use notably more illicit drugs and alcohol, are more likely to overdose, experience more episodes of depression, have a suicide rate three to four times higher than women, and die earlier.

With that said, is there really a question as to which gender is happier?

6- ‘‘I wish I cared less about what others think.’’ This could be applied to men and women, although I will admit that women may be more affected by the judgment of others, especially when their appearance is concerned.

7- ‘‘I wish I didn’t worry so much.’’ Women are more likely to worry about small things and tend to be more neurotic than men, and this is backed by science.

Published in 2011, a study named ‘‘Gender Differences in Personality across the Ten Aspects of the Big Five’’ by Yanna J. Weisberg, Colin G. DeYoung, and Jacob B. Hirsh found that women scored higher on neuroticism when compared to men. They state the following in their results:

[‘‘Neuroticism describes the tendency to experience negative emotion and related processes in response to perceived threat and punishment; these include anxiety, anger, depression, self-consciousness, and emotional lability (Emotional lability is a neurological condition that causes uncontrollable laughing or crying, often at inappropriate times). Women have been found to score higher than men on Neuroticism as measured at the Big Five trait level, as well as on most facets of Neuroticism.’’]

However, we saw earlier that men are under diagnosed when it comes to depression, are more likely to abuse illicit drugs and alcohol, overdose, and commit suicide. There are a lot of worries hidden under the mantle that most men wear.

I think that it is a fair assessment to have this point as neutral.

8 and 9- ‘‘I wish I took better care of myself,’’ and ‘‘I wish I didn’t take life for granted.’’ Those two points go hand in hand, and they obviously go to men. According to the National Pharmacy Association (UK), men visit a pharmacy on average four times a year compared to 18 times a year for women. On the same matter, a massive study was done on more than 380,000 people in the UK (MRC|CSO Social & Public Health Science Unit, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK) and they determined that the crude consultation rate was 32% lower in men than women.

If women use health care more generously than men and are quick to consult their doctor, while men are not, it shows that women take better care of themselves and they do not take their life for granted, does it not? Since men are the ones who don’t take care for their health, shouldn’t they be the ones who regret it more in the end?

10- ‘‘I wish I lived in the now.’’ Most people do not live in the present, and I do not see why this point should go toward either sex.

While the types of grief that we saw earlier can be applied to any group of people, I believe that they perfectly apply to the men who repressed their emotions and worked like draft horses their entire lives.

In the end, men impose male sacrifice and male disposability onto other men and themselves, and they turn out to be regretful about it in their last moments… How awful is that? It’s akin to shooting yourself in the foot only to feel remorse and realize it was a bad idea. The grief the disposable man...

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