Perennial Regret
As time passes, our scope of experience increases.
As our scope of experience increases, our personality is altered.
As our personality is altered, the actions we take change.
With enough time—with enough growth—we find ourselves looking back at our past with a sense of confusion: “Just what was I thinking?”
We seem foolish. And yet, in that past moment, we may have made the best decision for ourselves. Knowing only what we knew then, we chose a path forward. Knowing what we know now, we see the error in our ways.
This gap—the distance between then and now—is where regret is born.
Perhaps our personality can be boiled down to our values and principles. Then, our actions can then be thought of as the consequence of our values—the realization of them, ideally.
Growth sees our values change, and so our actions should follow suit.
Then, even one that lives their entire life with intention would still be destined to face regret.
Why? In each moment, we are renewed.
With our ever-increasing scope of experience, with knowing what we now know, our past is re-contextualized. We are forced to examine the mistakes of a novice with the mind of a journeyman.
What’s more, assuming you continue to grow, this state of regret is permanent.
We are human. Even the best of us will experience embarrassment, missed opportunities, accidental hurt, and general unnecessary misfortune.
No one can expect to live a perfect life. Worse yet, what may have felt perfect in the moment may sometimes be understood as a failure only with more years of experience.
We can make the right decision today, and still, tomorrow we may see them as wrong with our renewed understanding.
Do you have any regrets?
Perhaps it’s foolish to say you have no regrets, as it implies that either you have not grown enough to note your past transgressions or that you believe them to be positive.
That you haven’t noticed all the times you’ve embarrassed yourself, all the opportunities you’ve missed, or all the times you’ve hurt someone. Or worse, that you still believe them to be right.
But perhaps the question shouldn’t be “Do you have any regrets?” but instead, “How do your regrets impact you?”
Sir Anthony Hopkins spoke about this in an interview. 1
[I] Don’t have time to regret. We move on. ‘Cause we are acceptable for what we are, not what we think we should be. I am accepted in myself for what I am, not what I think I should be—because that’s a lie. I am a sinner, I am an old sinner. I’ve done some bad things—I’ve done some good things. So, you know, you just forgive yourself and move on.
This response shows an understanding of mistake—an awareness of sin—while being able to “move on.”
And this is the issue at hand. We have two options in life:
- Avoid regret by never growing.
- Learn to live with regret.
Don’t avoid your personal evolution fearing it may change you.
Don’t allow regret to consume your spirit.
Don’t deny regret entirely, pretending you have none.
But how do we live with it?
As Sir Anthony Hopkins said, “Forgive yourself and move on.”
One addition would be to make amends where necessary.
But, for all the rest, for all the regrets that only impacted your life, forgive yourself. Take account of all your embarrassments, all those missed opportunities, all your failures. Accept them and move on.
Keep a gentle hope that in the future, knowing what you now know, you might be able to avoid those same transgressions. Accept that perhaps your knowledge today is predicated on those previous mistakes—your experience, generally.
All we can do is continue forward. Unresolved regret weighs us down. Don’t turn a blind eye to it. Face it head-on now, so you may move forward tomorrow.
2021-08-07