The Importance of Regret

I don’t understand why people are frequently insisting, “I don’t have any regrets.” Maybe others intend it as a polite social convention, like saying, “I’m fine. Everything’s perfect!” Maybe it’s a prudent way of avoiding the inevitable follow-up questions to admitting regrets. But I’m a literally-minded person who doesn’t get the point of saying things that are untrue.

Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.

I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.

Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.

Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.

I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.

When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.

Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.

There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.

Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.

I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.

Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)

“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.

Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.