Against my better judgement, I commented on a post in Simone Grant’s blog, Sex, Lies & Dating in the City. It was about men putting their work first. Almost immediately, the comments to mine used the old cliché, “very few people on their deathbed wish they’d spent more time at the office.”

Ok, those people are not me and that is not what I was talking about. Nor do I think Simone was talking about that kind of work either. The kind of work I know is that which is you and you with it, like being a painter, an artist or a writer.

All the writers and artists I’ve ever known who have died only had one deeply honest regret; that they did not have enough time to finish that book or that painting. Work to them was never work; it was the expression of who they are and they know that death will give them a voice that only includes what they were able to leave behind. A deathbed is only an urgent need to finish, to leave a complete opus of one’s existence.

Unless you know that that kind of work, you will always see a rift between who you are and what you do. And you will always feel that tug and allow yourself to be tugged by all the wrong people who demand you be less than who you really are.

*To date, I have known only two women who truly understand this. You know who you are.