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My take on regret
#1
My take on regret
The Obvious take on regret

I’m guessing that I’m getting in that stage of my life that the first great round of regrets is going around. I’m not talking about the kind of; I should or shouldn’t have asked Melissa to the ball. I should or shouldn’t have gone to that party. I should or shouldn’t have spent the entire night studying. I should or shouldn’t have tried shrooms that one time. No, I’m in that phase in which friends have started moving out and making their own homes. Some sooner than me, some later.

Me? At twenty-six I’m currently still living at home. For the past 9 months my girlfriend and I have been completely renovating the house we bought. It’s finally coming together and in a few months we should be able to move in together. A big step, but I’m looking forward to it. Some of my friends have been living alone or with their partner for a few years now. My best friend, two years older than me, only just finished studying and still has some way to go, I fear. With a master’s degree in philosophy, his chances of finding a job in the sector he studied for are… limited.

And that’s the first real stage of regret, isn’t it? Did I pick the right studies? After all, here we are in a third of our lives and its going to be hard to turn it all around now. Did my partner and I make the right choice in living together? Two of my best friends for the past 15 years split up a few months ago. They’d been living together for years. And where do you find yourself then? Suddenly you have a car and an apartment neither of you wants anymore. You’ve ‘wasted’ all those years… Think of where you could be, now. Hell, when I’d thought about my life, I would have thought to have left my parent’s home at the latest two years ago. I’m glad we bought the house, but perhaps we should have …

Therein lies the problem of regret though. I start hearing from friends  and family and coworkers about how disheartened some of them are at how life turned out. People who tally up all the ‘good scores’ and ‘al the bad scores’ and who at any point in their lives want to see if they are, on the whole, doing alright and coming out on top. People who shirk away from regret as if it is proof that you are somehow ‘losing the game’.

I find this to be a ridiculous way to look at regret. People see it as something solely negative and try to reduce it because of that reason. Yet it piles on, year after year. But what is regret, when you get down to it?

Regret is nothing but he inevitable side-effect of making a choice. The only ones who can not regret anything, are slaves in the truest sense of the word. They are those who have absolutely no say in how their lives turn out. And while sometimes we like to be told what to do or choose or buy or try… These kinds of slaves are purely hypothetical, non-existent as our choices not to make a choice are always and foremost a choice in themselves. So forget about banning regret. You’re going to have it. And guess what? You’re going to have a quasi-infinite amount of it, if you look at it rationally. After all, for every choice we make one way, we rule out a greater deal of options. Our choices aren’t ‘Art school’ or ‘Studying Law’. They aren’t  even ‘Studying’ or ‘not studying’.  There are always more options than A and B.  So not only are you going to face regret in your life… You’re going to face what seems like an infinite amount of regret for all the paths you didn’t take, stacking up against the one path you did.

And it is because of that that if you ever find yourself ‘tallying the scores’, you already know you’ve lost. Because you have decided to make it into a game in which you face an infinitely stronger and better equipped foe.  No matter how happy you might feel in your life, if you think about it honestly; what you have can never stack up against the infinite possibilities of what you could have had. This aligns with my views on the overratedness of being happy, but perhaps that’s a rant for some other time.

What is a better way then? Trying not to think about it? Most people seem to adopt this strategy. Almost equally foolish, I say. Apart from the fact that regret is a valuable teacher… It grows exponentially as the years fly by. You can’t outrun it forever. Its weight will crush you, if you give it any.

No. The best way to look at regret is accepting it for what it is; the eternal cost for having agency in your own life. And because this toll is limitless and unavoidable, it’s not something worth getting hung up over. The point is that whatever you decide, you will face quasi-infinite regret. And precisely because of that, regret is without inherent meaning or weight. It is not some tally of negative and dumb shit you’ve done. It’s solely the proof you were at any and every junction in your life and acted like a thinking, living, breathing human being.

Viewed in this light, you will see that life is not really about coming out on top. It’s not about dragging out the best possible outcome out of your options. It’s not about having the least amount of regrets. Because guess what? That would be something everyone would lose at. At least, if they were intellectually honest about it.

Life is not some grand competition. It’s a journey. It’s not a test. It’s an experience. And if you embrace the inescapability and infinity of regret you won’t spend that journey needlessly looking back. You won’t muddle that experience of the here and now by reaching for a past you can’t feel anymore. And you won’t sit down and start torturing yourself over what could have been and how you could have improved your rankings in the test, instead, you’ll see that in whatever part of your life you are, as long as you have life, your journey can and will continue.

If ever you find yourself unhappy, I hope you do and choose something that will make you feel more complete and fulfilled. And there is nothing wrong with re-evaluating your life. But just realize that your choices always lead you forward. And above all, accept that you can’t fail at life as long as you don’t make it into a test. All you can do truly do is take a different path.
"If we go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, suggesting 69.
[Image: 41bebac06973488da2b0740b6ac37538.jpg]-
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#2
RE: My take on regret
Pfft, twenty-six is still young. What I wouldn't give to be that age again.

Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#3
RE: My take on regret
(October 18, 2017 at 9:28 am)Lutrinae Wrote: Pfft, twenty-six is still young.  What I wouldn't give to be that age again.

Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.

Accept life, and you must accept regret
- Henri Frederic Amiel.
"If we go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, suggesting 69.
[Image: 41bebac06973488da2b0740b6ac37538.jpg]-
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#4
RE: My take on regret
I can understand what you mean. When one door closes, a hundred more open up also means when one door opens, a hundred more closes.. It's a matter of perspective though and I think it would help if we have an optimistic outlook.

Most of the regret feelings are imo just a "grass is greener on the other side" side effect. There is a ancient proverb called "yeylaym nalaitynui", what it means in English is that whatever happens to us, in the end it will be alright. I live by this tbh, there is a kind of comforting optimistic reassurance to it. No matter what happens, in the end it will be alright. We'll all end up living good lives and enjoy a lot of good things. Stressing about it will just make everything....stressful
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#5
RE: My take on regret
I'm sorry but all I can keep thinking is 'you bought a house with someone you've never lived with?!'
“What screws us up the most in life is the picture in our head of what it's supposed to be.”

Also if your signature makes my scrolling mess up "you're tacky and I hate you."
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#6
RE: My take on regret
(October 18, 2017 at 10:36 am)mlmooney89 Wrote: I'm sorry but all I can keep thinking is 'you bought a house with someone you've never lived with?!'

Aye. It was our concern too. But we've been together for 6 years now and decided, in one of our more grown up moments, that the benefits outweighed the risks.
"If we go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, suggesting 69.
[Image: 41bebac06973488da2b0740b6ac37538.jpg]-
Reply
#7
RE: My take on regret
An interesting take on regret and I agree, one should avoid dwelling in the "what if's" because they are nothing but imagination that brings unnecessary anxiety. I always think of these things as what's in the past is in the past. If it's in the past I cannot do anything about it and the best thing to do is to learn from that experience and to keep my focus on what is now and what is to come, because those are the only things I can really change.
And besides that, had you gone down a different path then the exact person you are now, the conscious individual You, would never have existed and another individual would instead exist as You. I'm quite happy being me, because I am a result of my choices.
"History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets." -Yuval Noah Harari
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#8
RE: My take on regret
Regret may be unavoidable but the way you hold it can vary a lot.  Some regrets you can't help but realize are silly.  Flying home from a wonderful vacation can be regretted.  But you realize the only way to avoid that regret is to have no vacations or else the kind you wished would end sooner, not an attractive alternative.  Or you ordered the rocky road ice cream cone and now your wife's selection of mango looks even better.  Unless you're willing to wind up looking like the governor of New Jersey, you don't go back and also have the mango or any of the other attractive alternatives.  Plenty of choices are like that.

In my hobby of making a garden there are a ton of choices, and I am quite the collector of plants.  But I wouldn't want all the plants I admire crammed into the limited canvas of my plot.  It is more important to make aesthetic choices than to be a glutton about it.  In the end it is the pleasure of being in the space and serving the muse that counts.  Like a garden our lives are impermanent.  The joy of creating either one should trump the regret of finitude or the regret at not being able to have it all.
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#9
RE: My take on regret
Hmm , this matters are well adressed on the books made froms Oshos interviews.
But if regret comes face it , accept it , and ask yourself but "why am I regreting? "
And depending on the problem look at your life , fron what i rode , there are plenty of reasons to be happy for:
1 you have a girlfriend that you love
2 you are making a home
3 you followed your passion in the career area

And stop thinking about how things ended up for other people , you aren't living their lives , you are living yours.
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#10
RE: My take on regret
Damn. I can't really read the OP unless the text size is increased. It's gonna give me serious eyestrain if I read a post of that size when the text is much smaller than normal.

Oh wait I can use the zoom function and then read it all.

Brb.

(October 18, 2017 at 7:04 am)Mr.Obvious Wrote: Regret is nothing but he inevitable side-effect of making a choice. The only ones who can not regret anything, are slaves in the truest sense of the word. They are those who have absolutely no say in how their lives turn out. And while sometimes we like to be told what to do or choose or buy or try… These kinds of slaves are purely hypothetical, non-existent as our choices not to make a choice are always and foremost a choice in themselves. So forget about banning regret. You’re going to have it. And guess what? You’re going to have a quasi-infinite amount of it, if you look at it rationally. After all, for every choice we make one way, we rule out a greater deal of options. Our choices aren’t ‘Art school’ or ‘Studying Law’. They aren’t  even ‘Studying’ or ‘not studying’.  There are always more options than A and B.  So not only are you going to face regret in your life… You’re going to face what seems like an infinite amount of regret for all the paths you didn’t take, stacking up against the one path you did.

I can honestly assert that I have absolutely no regrets . . . what do you make of that?
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