Is A Life Without Regret Possible?

Many people have different stances when it comes to regret. Some believe you shouldn't regret anything. The popular belief dictates that who you are today is a result of the choices you have made in the past.

The fallacy I see in this comes from the possibility of there being potentially a "better" you had you made better decisions in the past. No one is able to claim that he/she has chosen all the best decisions in their lives up to that point. So what does that say about the people who claim to have no regrets?

They are content. They are content with who they are and who they've become as individuals. Being content is entirely counterintuitive to human nature. For centuries, technological advances and the development of knowledge has been driven by the discontent of humans in their current state. We are constantly working to learn more, live more comfortably, and become "better" individuals overall. So because we really remain content with anything for long, It's inevitable that we must also feel regret.

Foundations of Regret

So regret basically stems from us wishing we could do something differently in the past. Everyday, so many different decisions are made. In economics, the term "opportunity cost" is used to represent the cost of choosing to do one thing over another. If in any given day I decide to go to work for 14 hours, sleep for 6 hours, commute in my car for 2 hours and eat for 2 hours, with nothing else added on, I give up the opportunity to hang out with friends, to call my parents/grandparents, and to spend time with family. At the moment, it may seem like the most logical decision to make because we need to make money, but if god forbid one of them passes away, I know for sure I'd regret working so long.

Dealing With Regret

But with so many decisions that are made each day, we're bound to have a surplus of "wrong" choices. So what can you do? Learn from the mistakes of others before making your own. Life is entirely about experiences and learning to become better. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, life is entirely too short to possibly make all the mistakes on your own. It is so much more beneficial to instead learn from the mistakes of others. There is actually a site dedicated to this project that shows the different regrets of people of all ages. It is a really great resource for people of any age to stop by and learn as it is also updated on a daily basis.

Without a doubt, we will continue making mistakes. To err is to be human. And truthfully, some mistakes are a lot more costly than others. The best that we as error-prone beings can do is to learn from the mistakes of others to hopefully live a life with minimal regrets. Life is too short for that.