#Microblog Monday 206: Regrets
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I don’t have a lot of regrets. There are things I wish had been possible, like going to Harvard (I didn’t have the grades) or studying abroad junior year (I would have had to let go of two awesome jobs to do so — no way). But those aren’t regrets because I understand that they were either out of the realm of possibility (I’m just never going to be Queen of a small nation) or the trade-off made it not worth it. (They were really awesome jobs.)
Yet I was still interested in a recent article in the Guardian about regret that I think a lot of other people will be interested in, too, if you missed it the first time around. This sums up the main idea:
A distinction between what they call the “ideal self”, the person you’d be if you fulfilled all your goals and ambitions, and the “ought self”, the person you’d be if you met your obligations to others, and lived a morally upright life. Overwhelmingly, they found, people regret ideal-self failures – in short, not pursuing your dreams – more than ought-self failures, such as failing to visit a dying relative or cheating on a spouse.
Go read the whole article and then let me know, what are your regrets?
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9 comments
I don’t really have regrets in the sense that the article contemplates. I sometimes wonder how my life would’ve turned out if I had made different choices (specifically, with respect to the schools I attended and the jobs I’ve taken), but as I am happy with my current life, and all of those choices led me to it, I don’t dwell on it.
Interesting article. In terms of regret I do carry plenty of “ought self” regrets. Mainly that I didn’t spend more quality time with love ones since passed. Other regrets are things like letting insecurities and shyness hold me back when I was younger. Missed opportunities
Not joining Peace Corp is a regret. It would have meant leaving behind my cat, who I adopted while in college, meaning there’s a good chance she would have been rehomed. That and I didn’t feel I was a good candidate (impostor syndrome and all). Looking back, life would have been very different if I had gone down that path (likely wouldn’t have met Grey, etc). Still, there’s always the what if for this aspect of the “ideal-self.”
This is an interesting article about the difference between the ideal and ought. I think there’s a lot of guilt surrounding “oughts” that doesn’t exist for “ideals.” More to chew on with this one.
Regrets, I have a few. I try to live my life without regretting anything, but I definitely have a few things from my past that I do regret. They are also kind of my secrets, though. Had I done a few things differently I could have wound up with a totally different life.
One regret I can share is this:
My dad had this religious item hanging next to his bed for years. The symbol meant that if you died wearing them you would go straight to heaven. (This was from the time when we believed in pergatory;doctrine has since changed)
The day before he died I remember looking from him to this item hanging near him thinking I should put them on him, but feeling like if I did take that step, I would be admitting to myself that he was going to die, so I couldn’t bring myself to do it. He died the next day, and while there is no doubt in my mind that he went to heaven, I still regretted not putting them in him, for not being strong enough to do that for him.
It’s a challenge t balance the wants of the moment with the possibilities of the bigger picture.
And I’ve been paying attention (through a class I’m taking) to discerning when I’m acting out of obligation and when I’m acting out of desire. Again, I think it’s a challenge to balance all that.
All told, though, I don’t have much in the way of regrets. If one thing had changed, everything would have changed.
This is a tough one. I feel like I could have regrets about things, like not leaving my shitty ex-husband sooner, or not leaving my teaching program in my undergraduate, but then other things in my life wouldn’t have played out quite the same and my life could look very different now, and not for the better. I had to stay with my ex-husband as long as I did to meet Bryce when I did. I had to have the experiences I got in my twenties to be the teacher I am today. Even regretting not trying for another publishing job so that I could get hired back by an editor I adored in trade publishing could have resulted in me having a different publishing career, but then would I be doing what I do now and married to who I am now? Probably not. I do regret things out of my control frequently, like that I couldn’t visit my grandmother due to a flu quarantine and then she passed before I could get to her, or that we’d made different decisions along our infertility path (but they probably would have ultimately resolved the same way). You could go crazy rethinking all your decisions. I try not to have regrets, or at least to entertain them but then acknowledge that without those misses, those different choices, I wouldn’t have the life I have today.
I don’t have major regrets; as others have said, even the unfortunate parts of life shape you and since I am happy to be who I am now I don’t regret anything really.
I have a few regrets. I regret wearing ugly clothes and glasses for much of my youth. That was so unnecessary. I regret that I was sometimes very resentful in my youth. I could have been braver about a hundred times. But at least I’ve made an effort to change what had to change. I kind of regret we couldn’t have children a little younger but on the other hand I’m grateful for how things turned out too
Oh man. I have a lot of regrets – especially those “ought” ones. I think it’s part of my struggle with anxiety. I get these pangs of “I should’ve reached out to that person more” or “why did I say/do that??” etc. There are times I’m in a better frame of mind and can be more forgiving of myself. I hope that becomes more of the norm.
Reading the comments, it seems to be true that our lives would not have worked out the same had we made different decisions, but it seems that the comments indicate that we don’t have any real regrets, rationalising instead that things worked out alright in the end. Is it maybe that in the act of identifying regrets, we find it difficult to admit that we’ve created something that we no longer want, therefore making our regrets difficult to acknowledge? Who know’s what would have happened if I had stood up to my dad and not gone to a University I didn’t want to go to? Who know’s what would have happened if I’d not let my catholic family prevent me from moving in with a guy I really loved? These are questions I ponder all the time, yet they’re not regrets. They are decisions that I took at the time which made the best sense then. Maybe, regrets are things that we foresee, and they compel us to act in a certain way. I can foresee that if I don’t continue to work hard in my career, all of my sacrifices will have been for nothing. I can foresee that if I don’t create a life for me which has people in it who I love, and love me for who I am, I will die very lonely. I can foresee that I still have many choices ahead, and I am conscious that I don’t want them to turn into regrets, so I will continue to do my best. That’s all any of us can do.