I don’t want to die under a cloud of regret: nagging doubts, shame about choices I’ve made, paths not taken, conflicts left unresolved.
It’s what led me to write my latest work-in-progress, “Nesting in Place,” about a young woman, Lark, who marries a charismatic environmental journalist only to find her life overshadowed by his obsession with saving the planet. She’s made the wrong choice—or so she believes. The novel unfolds in two interwoven narratives, the same Lark living two lives as if she’d made a different, equally fateful decision.
Like many authors, I write to answer a question. Needless to say, I’ve spent a lot of time over the past five years thinking, writing, contemplating about regret. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Six Lessons On Regret
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Regret Often Lives in the “If only…”
Regret might be defined as an enduring belief that our lives would be better if only we’d chosen differently. More often than not, we regret not what we’ve done—but what we haven’t done. Risks we avoided, opportunities missed.
Over the years, in an effort to maintain the peace, I’ve spent too much time trying to find the perfect words, filtering what I should say or not say. (Something I believe is especially challenging for women.) It’s not an easy thing, deciding when the risk of speaking up outweighs the cost of silence. I’ve certainly done my share of apologizing for unkind words, but in the scheme of things, I wish I’d been more honest, more outspoken, more courageous with my words.
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Second-Guessing Distorts Reality
We can be hard on ourselves when our best efforts come to naught. We second-guess our decision as if we could have known how everything would turn out. Sometimes we forget there were no good options. Or that we simply couldn’t have known what was going to happen. Regret tricks us into believing we should have known better, when in truth, we made the best decision we could in the moment. And who knows how another decision would have panned out?
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Regret Grows if We Let it
While writing “Nesting in Place,” it occurred to me that regret often starts small and then mushrooms over time, gaining a life of its own. We forget the effort and thoughtfulness, even the angst, that went into our decision. It is in retrospect that regret messes with our psyche.
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Too Many Choices
Years ago, I read a study that suggested we humans crave choice—but not free rein. The image of the cereal aisle comes to mind. 
We tend to believe that more choice is better. But in reality, more choice comes with the increasing likelihood that we’ll make the wrong choice (or so we believe). Think of the grocery store. With 480 boxes of cereal, we have the opportunity to choose the perfect one. Not too sweet. Not too bland. Low calorie. Not too expensive. Gluten-free? Infinite choice is paradoxically overwhelming.
If it were up to me, I could be happy with three options.
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Perfection is the Enemy of Peace
I’m sure everyone has their own particular challenges with regret, but for me, the key to making peace with regret has been this: Perfection is not only elusive but destructive. My own realizations about perfection started with walking the beach, taking photographs of birds and anemone, footprints in the sand. The “perfect” photograph with every detail in focus was not necessarily the most interesting.
What a boring world we’d live in without the bumps and warts and challenges of our lives.
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The Silver Lining of Regret
Regret gives us the opportunity to look inward and examine our values and goals. Can we do better next time? Can we forgive ourselves? What would we do differently next time? While many of us are loathe to think about our own deaths, regret may provide the impetus to imagine what we’ll have left behind. And amends we might want to make.
As long as we’re alive, there’s still time.
Can We Live—Or Die—Without Regret?
It’s impossible to live without regret, but can we die without regret? We’re human and imperfect. But we’re capable of forgiveness and apologizing. We’ve all read stories about the power of forgiveness even in the most tragic of situations.
In her well-known Ted talk, Kathryn Schulz tells the story of getting a tattoo—that she regretted the instant she walked out of the tattoo parlor. After much soul-searching, she concluded, “The point isn’t to live without any regrets, but not to hate ourselves for having them.”
Having written “Nesting in Place,” I can’t say my own regrets have magically disappeared, but I’m not so hard on myself. Forgiveness and self-compassion go a long way. I count that as a huge success.
For more on how to deal with regret, see Psyche Guide: How to Deal With Regret by Jelena Kecmanovic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts
What about you? What regrets have shaped your life? Have you found ways to make peace with the past?
While you’re waiting for “Nesting in Place,” to be completed, you might enjoy reading my other two novels: Thin Places and Cross Body Lead. Or my recent blog about Lightening Our Psychic Load.
