Regret

What do to with it

We recently spent an evening with my mom and dad celebrating their 72nd wedding anniversary. I asked them questions about their wedding, honeymoon and early years, much of which they couldn’t remember, but my mom declared that they were very good years. I agree. Then she randomly said, “I’m asking myself what I regret, and I can’t think of anything.”

It is a wonderful thing to reach the end of your life without regret. Having said that, I’m sure she had plenty of minor regrets, like I regret getting involved with this event or that committee, but those are long forgotten. She has said that she regrets not taking action on her macular degeneration earlier, but that didn’t come to mind as she pondered regrets.

Perhaps in one’s 90s regrets are too distant to worry about, but most of us have wondered, What if?

What if I had taken the other job? What if we hadn’t moved? What if we had moved? What if I had worked harder on my marriage? What if I had taken better care of myself? A common regret is not taking risks, playing it too safely, and it can be painful to imagine what might have been.

We all have at least a few regrets. In late adulthood, when we see how our decisions have played out, we might ask ourselves what life would have been like if we had made different choices.

But we can’t know the answer to that question and too much imagining can develop into dissatisfaction with your life as it is. Yes, your life would have taken different paths; in some ways it might have been better and in other ways it might have been worse. You will never know.

Thomas D, Gilovich, a professor at Cornell and researcher of regret, said in an article called Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda: The haunting regret of failing our ideal selves,

“In the short term, people regret their actions more than inactions,” he said. “But in the long term, the inaction regrets stick around longer.”

Building on those ideas, Gilovich and Davidai hypothesized that people’s most enduring regrets in life come from discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves.

“The failure to be your ideal self is usually an inaction,” said Gilovich. “It’s ‘I frittered away my time and never got around to teaching myself to code or play a musical instrument.’”

At this stage of life, we have a better idea of our ideal selves but we also realize that we don’t have the time that we once had. Regrets about how we spent the last 60 or 70 years are natural, but we also have the advantage of a better and expanded perspective, hard won wisdom, more gratitude, and we have become accustomed to our places in the world.

We can’t change the past, but if we have regrets, we should face them, mourn what we believe could have been, learn from them, and move ahead. Regrets may be a recognition of what is most meaningful in our lives, a clarifying of what we believe matters most.

Take what you’ve learned from your regrets and use it in your forward progress. Regrets won’t disappear, but they can be used as motivation to live more intentionally in these decades.

Late adulthood is a new stage of life, and for many of us it will be 20 or 30 years of productive living, and we don’t want to regret how we spend these wonderful years.

When I think about regrets, I realize that the decisions I’ve made, a few of them regrettable, have brought me to where I am today. God can always make a way. He can give back what we have lost or regretted.

The prophet Joel records a conversation with the Lord in which the people prayed to be spared after the locusts had devasted the land. In response, God made a promise.

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— Joel 2:25

Locust years are regrettable years. How can God restore those the years the locusts have eaten?

He goes on to say,

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. Joel 2:28-29

God has poured out his Spirit on every follower of Jesus, and he is more than capable of making our last 20 or 30 years more productive than the first 60 or 70. And in eternity, I believe we will have a chance to do all the things we didn’t have the desire, time, health or knowledge to do in this life.

We will have eternity to live to the full and love Jesus.

My mom has always been a reader, and she said that she probably would have spent her time doing more valuable things if she hadn’t been so intrigued by her books. I don’t know if she’d call it a regret, but she realizes that she missed out on some activities because she spent so much time reading. (I might have inherited some of that tendency.)

Now, she listens to books because of her damaged eyesight, and her brain is still sharp. She tells me almost every time I see her how much she’s looking forward to the day when she will experience the next stage of her life…in heaven.

All the years the locusts have eaten will be given back to her, and then some.

I want to minimize regret going forward, how about you?