Is It Time To Leave Regret Behind?
I pose what I think is a simple question to my friends: do they live with regrets? The question hasn’t come from nowhere. I recently found a relative on the internet who has been whittling away at a biography about his grandfather. When he asked me to fill in the gaps – providing details of my father’s (his granduncle) life story, I came up short. Why, oh why, hadn’t I ever made sure I’d asked my father all the relevant bits and pieces of his life before he died? Why hadn’t I prodded my mother for some of the gaps before she died?
Frankly, I am a passport-holder to the United States of Regret, hovering somewhere between the road less travelled and Gwyneth Paltrow’s goddamn Sliding Door. Yes, I should have applied for that editor’s job. No, I shouldn’t have dated my very first boyfriend. And on it (sometimes) goes.
My regrets lay largely dormant, whirring away quietly at the back of my brain in the same way a novel’s torn-out page operates: it only really bothers you when you arrive at a certain point in the story. But when I posted a question on Facebook, I learned that for some people, the whir is louder. Eva*, for one, is keen to unleash her regrets in full force.
“Where do I start?” she says. “I’m 61, and as you get older, regret really starts biting you.” She regrets: that she didn’t pursue a career but followed expectations to marry. That she chose a first husband who wasn’t everything she expected a spouse should be. That she married again only to discover that her second husband didn’t share her interests or encourage her talents. She regrets neither marriage but rather the bits of herself she has lost in the process. “I feel very undernourished,” she says. “You’re meant to let go of regrets, and I think you can if you’re an optimistic person. But I’m like Eeyore. I’m pessimistic. I always live with regret.”
“It’s such a powerful thing because when we experience regret, we feel like we’re going through it alone”
Her words made me curious. Is regret something that happens increasingly as you age? Does your default outlook determine whether you live with regret or not? Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School in New York, is the co-author of a paper entitled, The Ideal Road Not Taken: The Self-Discrepancies Involved in People’s Most Enduring Regrets. In six studies on regret, he learned that the intensity of regret doesn’t change depending on whether a person is young or old, or whether they are male or female. What alters is the content of their regrets.
“In our research, we identify different categories of regret,” he explains. “‘Ought’ regrets, related to your responsibilities – I should have called my grandmother, been there for that friend. ‘Ideal’ regrets, related to your dreams and goals – I could have been [a lawyer, etc]. The difference between the two is that when we have an ‘ought’ regret, we tend to feel urgent and deal with it. We call the person we want to apologise to, or we seek therapy or religious connection or whatever helps. But when it comes to our ‘ideal’ regrets, we let them simmer in the background where they don’t disappear – they just keep simmering. And when we reach a point where we reflect on our lives, these regrets become really salient.”
Davidai’s research highlighted two helpful takeaways. “One is understanding how common and shared the experience of regret is across the world. It’s such a powerful thing, because when we experience regret, we feel like we’re going through it alone. The second thing is that when you’ve got a regret you find yourself going back to, maybe it’s time to deal with it, because it can’t go away by itself. One option might be to do what you regret not doing. Or deal with it by thinking through it or talking about it with a friend or professional and understanding what the issue is. Or focus on the lesson you learned from the regret.
“For me, my personal regret was about missed travel opportunities. I thought, what does that mean about me and how can I identify things in my life so I don’t regret things in 20 years from now? Maybe it means I’m the kind of person who’s adventurous, so how do I bring adventure in my life? We can find our own personal way of dealing with these things, because regrets tend to be unfinished businesses until then.”
But I discover that not everyone likes to travel to Should’ve-Would’ve-Could’ve land as much as I do. To wit, Marika: “I truly never live with regret. There are absolutely times I regret doing something, but I do believe in each moment I’m making the best choice I can at the time. So how can I regret that choice? I did the best I could.”
Natalie “I definitely subscribe to the life-is-too-short-for-them camp, and that anyone can flip regret to see the opportunities and lessons. Having said that, my only regret would be not having studied medicine. I really wish I had.”
Anne “I don’t believe in regret. I haven’t always made good decisions but I have always made them thoughtfully.”
After a few days of thinking about the topic, my friend Lillian bombards me with a flurry of texts. “If you really think about what you regret, it’s usually something else – disappointment in yourself or someone else, or sorrow. Feeling regret is kind of like giving up your power or agency. I think experiencing regret is a bit like unprocessed trauma – like, I regret not spending more time with [a friend who died]. But what I am really feeling is sadness that I lost him and in this moment I am missing him. Regret is the gateway for greater understanding.” Her suggestion is to reduce regret by reframing it altogether. And I think she’s right.