We all are taught, “Live a life, where you don’t have any regrets”, You subscribe to the idea and think “OK, I’ll live a life, where I don’t have any regrets!”, This sounds great from a macro perspective, but once you start to look at things from a microscopic level you start to see how difficult and punishing this kind of mindset can be.
Just to be clear, I’m not going to be talking about the obvious things one must do to avoid regrets. I’m going to dive into the nuances that are often overlooked when it comes to the idea of living a life without regrets.
Though Decisions
In life, there will be times when you’d have to make difficult decisions. The type of decisions where you don’t know right from wrong, where there is no black and white, just gray all around. The kinds of decisions where you can only know in hindsight what was the right thing to do.
When you are at the cusp of those decisions, you can’t subscribe to the idea of “I don’t want to have any regrets”, because you have absolutely no idea which of those decisions will lead to a regret.
Oftentimes, people who are in those situations will look back and think, I should’ve taken the other option. In the hindsight, it’s so easy to see what should’ve been the right decision, and oftentimes these people would have regrets for not choosing the other option.
The Dilemma Of Control
The thing about taking a decision is that we are the ones in control, We have the choice to do X or Y, So when we look at our decision in the hindsight we feel like “WE” made the mistake, because we were the ones in control of our own choices, and we decided to choose the wrong option.
This is why when you have to take tough decisions where you don’t know right from wrong, it can easily feel that you made the wrong call when you look back. These decisions will lead to a deep sense of regret based on your own actions. Giving you an illusion that you had more control of the situation than you actually did.
The Endless Possibilities
We all have had times when we think about different things, and we wonder how amazing it’ll be to be able to do them. These imaginative thoughts are the fuel that help us achieve good things and excel in the world, but we all have a limit to how much we can do things in the world. You can be sure that, you can’t do all the things that you imagine, even though they might be possible and easy to do, there will always be things that you’d not be able to achieve, given the limited time you have on earth.
This is where I think we end up committing the second kind of regret. The one where we look back and think,“I should’ve done that, there must’ve been a way for me to do so” and I agree, there must’ve been a way for you to achieve that.
But here are the things we don’t keep in mind when doing so –
- Did you have the same amount of knowledge back then that you have now about the things you wanted to achieve?
- Was your mindset that same 10 years ago as it is now?
- Were you as mature back then as you’re now?
- Did you have enough time back then to try to get it, without sacrificing something of equal value or more?
If “No”, then would you have been able to achieve your goals without the knowledge, the mindset, the maturity, while also focusing on other things?
We humans are very good at skewing our perspective on the past. We have the ability to look at our past, from the lens of our present knowledge, maturity, and mindset. What this does is makes our past mistakes look way stupider than they actually were.
And if you’re someone like me who keeps looking from possibilities, there is a big chance that you’d have all the regrets that you can imagine, because every decision that you take is a fork in the road that can lead you to places you’ve not imagined yet.
Set Unachievable Goals
It’s easy to live a life without regrets if you set small goals. The kinds of goals that do not challenge you beyond your capabilities. If you do that, then you can say, “I have no regrets, I’ve achieved all the things I set my eyes on!”, but is that really the best you’d want for yourself?
There isn’t any fun in life when you’re not setting goals that scare you. You’re not a superior personality that you’ll achieve all your goals, there will be goals that’ll always be unachievable no matter how capable you are.
This is another reason why you might have some regrets, because there was something you wanted to achieve but couldn’t. Feeling this way is not a bad thing, it just shows that your goals are bigger and scarier than most of the people.
All Regrets Aren’t Permanent
Not all regrets are permanent. There might be times when you’d mess something up and have a regret due to your actions, but that regret will teach you a valuable lesson which will make you not repeat the same actions again.
That regret won’t seem like a regret with time, as you’d learn to do better every time a similar situation comes forth. And looking back, you’d see how that mess from the past holds a valuable lesson for your future.
What Do You Learn
Here’s the beauty of having maturity. As you learn more about how the world works, and you start to look at the bigger picture in life. You can focus on just a few things and forget about the rest.
Surely you will have regrets, but you have to understand that having regrets is a part of life. You can also say that regrets are important to have in our lives, because they show you that you’re a human who is imperfect and trying to get better in life.
This is why subscribing to the idea of living a life without regrets does not make total sense and is something to be kept in mind.