Pop culture is funny. It infects you without you ever knowing it, convinces you that somehow you thought of it yourself and with such conviction. These powerful religious beliefs fabricated by humanity are strange to me, as I am sure they are to you when you look back on the superstitions of former generations. They can make you scratch your head.

Well I am scratching my head, and I know I am not the only one. This cultural belief of “living life without regret” is just unreal. At first I thought it was immaturity, because what idiot would believe they could or should live life without regret? Maybe they were too young to ever have a regret.

If that be the case, hopefully I can prevent you from having an identity crisis. Your identity should not be founded on having “no regrets”. You’re doing identity wrong, if that be the case.

On the Quest to Be Proven Right…

When I asked this question to the public, the majority of the answers were from grown adults who by now should have had at least one regrettable moment. Not a single one told me it was immature to not have regrets.

Well, that is perplexing…

If even grown people believe living life without regret isn’t just not immature but justifiable, we have a situation. Either I am wrong and a complete ass (happened before, so… a strong possibility), or I happen to be right, and everyone else is mislead. To investigate my sanity, I did what any biased person would do – I searched for ways I could be proven right by having smart people resonate with my original beliefs.

I found a TED talk:

In the talk, “Don’t Regret Regrets” by Kathryn Shulz, she finds an epic historical quote that summarizes the ideology of living without regret:

She goes on to explain that this quote is from Lady MacBeth, a character in a play who is trying to convince her husband that murdering all those people is okay. Karthryn explains that Lady MacBeth has symptoms of a serial killer: a lack of regard for humanity, an inability to feel remorse for her actions. Kathryn further explains that this lack of remorse is also possible in those with a specific type of brain damage and that the only way to ensure you have “no regrets” is to have a lobotomy.

She can really throw down. I mean, wow, serial killers? Lobotomy? Geesh. I think she took my insults to this ideology to the next level. I’d hate to be her opponent in a presidential campaign. Glad Kathryn is on my side here.

Anyway, despite my research bias, I feel I have won the argument with my self doubt. Congrats to me. Yay, me. Woot! That means I am going to continue my rant and tell you my logic in arriving at the not-so-blissful conclusion that…

Living Without Regret is Not Only Impossible, but Wrong.

I used to think that having regrets was unnecessary and dangerous, stupid and far from wise or intelligent. Who wants to be weighed down by self-created burdens? A crazy percentage of people think like that, religiously, arguing to the point where they upset themselves and have to walk away. They think living life without regret is somehow an ideal worth having, a personal goal towards a positive mindset. Trouble is, it is complete and utter nonsense, detached from reality.

I think people misunderstand the eternity of a regret. We want to believe that having the thankfulness to learn from a poor decision or lack of action erases the regret. Truth is, a regret stays a regret if even a memory of a regret. It’s still a regret whether or not you obsess or feel weighed down by it at the moment in time. Thus, having regrets is inevitable at some point in your life journey.

People may misunderstand what a regret actually is… A regret is a sadness or disappointment combined with wishing you had done things differently. You can’t learn from a mistake without wishing it goes differently in the future, which is the same as wishing it had been done differently in the past if you remove the chronological paradox of not being able to change your own past and the temptation of accepting it without remorse.

Accepting the past has nothing to do with having or not having regrets because wishing is a present state and therefore pivotal of the past whether or not it is for the future. Therefore, if you wish for a better future because you once had been sad or disappointed, you have a regret. We should also accept that, too, like we accept our past, and quit fussing about the technicalities of regret to achieve some sort of perfect, unrealistic standard of living life without regret. There is no loop hole with regret. Either you learn or you never had a regret.

It is my belief that we should have more regrets, not less.

This is not for the sake of having regrets, but as a yardstick for how much you are willing to experience new situations. In other words, being more sensitive to potential areas of regret and accepting them as life lessons should serve us well and keep us away from denying their significance to change our future for the better.

Conclusion

A regret is still a regret whether you learn from the mistake or not, whether you still feel remorse, whether you accept your past or not.

You can’t live life without regret, nor should you. Let your regrets empower you to make change in the world. That doesn’t mean they’re not regrets.

Love your regrets. They’re a part of you.

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