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OK, but maybe you SHOULD live a life of regret
Regret-sensitive decision-making for your big life choices
I sat at the airport café table, my flat white untouched, staring at my phone. I thumbed my passport absent-mindedly. The choices I’d made to get me to JFK that day felt heavy.
Everything in my rational brain told me that nothing about it should feel heavy, but my rational brain had stopped talking to my anxiety somewhere in the TSA precheck line.
“It’s just a flight,” I whispered to myself. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always come back.”
But it wasn’t just a flight. It was the culmination of dozens of decisions — big and small — that took me out of my job, out of the US, chasing a job in a country I’d never lived in like some modern-day Marco Polo. What if I moved and hated it? Worse, what if I didn’t move? What if I stayed put and resented never trying?
What was I supposed to do with all the potential regret?
What shall we do about regret?
Popular culture harangues us about regret — and specifically how we should always live without it. “Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience,” as Victoria Holt (apparently) said.
