Chapter 40

What you didn’t do. What I didn’t do. Are those the things we really are going to regret 20 years from now Mark Twain?? Maybe this is true of you, but I don’t think it is true of me. Of course none of us knows what we will regret 20 years from now, but we can consider these matters and give them some thought. I am living life full bore right now, can’t imagine regretting much of anything 20 years from now, but I have been wrong before. So I will grant that I could be most wrong.

However you must also think about the word regret. Not all regrets have the same weight. Regretting the years I missed in the life of my parents, has a very different weight than the regret of a moral failure. Regretting a financial choice or mistake is very different than regret for choosing to be overweight for 25 years. Regret for your career choice could be very very different than your regret for overindulging last night. So regret is not the same from one situation to the next, from one decision to the next, each one has different consequences. And regret is a consequence of the mind.

It happens only in your head. Its a choice. Its how you decide to view an event, a decision, a history. You can decide differently too. You can perceive these events and histories and decisions as terrible, which equals some form of regret, or you can see them as neutral or marginally good, which equals a choice in the narrative you tell yourself.