We must strive to live a life free of regret. That is the general consensus. But to accept life, one must accept regret. So when is it a positive marker, of having dared, tried a new track, picked up and carried on? How much is too much? And is there a type of regret to avoid?
A still from the 2015 film Inside Out. It can get crowded inside one’s head. And even tranquillity can cause a kind of regret, Assisi says. (Disney / Pixar)
An otherwise gregarious young woman is stuck in an unhappy marriage and believes she has no way out. A man who has earned many accolades and is surrounded by a doting family is, at 45, convinced he cannot reinvent himself; and he wants to, so he can leave a toxic workplace for a way of life that matters to him.
Conversations with an older generation suggest that tranquillity can cause a kind of regret all its own: that of a lack of purpose. There’s also regret over things that one had no control over: so many young people have had opportunities snatched from them in the pandemic years.
It was amid the pandemic, 18 months ago, that Daniel Pink, author of The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward (2022), began collecting responses to his World Regret Survey. As thousands of people submitted a line or two on their single biggest regret — infidelities, career choices, succumbing to pressure to marry, not being more confident, not tending to friendships better, not travelling more — patterns emerged.
Pink now posits that all regrets fall into four categories: Foundational regrets, Boldness regrets, Connection regrets and Moral regrets.
Foundational regrets hit when people realise they are in a severe predicament that they could have reasonably prevented. Not saving up enough and then being struck by a bout of unemployment or illness is a prime example.
The largest number of regrets, Pink found, fall into two other categories: Boldness regrets and Connection regrets. People rued not taking chances they could have taken, not staying connected with those who mattered.
Moral regrets emerged as the most complex category: people regretted, for instance, being unfaithful to a partner, but did not regret lying about it, or vice-versa; some evaded a certain kind of tax they felt was unjust, but ended up feeling haunted by their actions.
After reading scores of the survey submissions, which are posted anonymously and can be viewed on worldregretsurvey.com, I called Vivek Singh, a renowned Delhi-based life coach. Why was I finding these snippets so troubling? His answer caught me off-guard. “What you choose to see is a reflection of who you are.” The people whose voices I was latching on to reflected the regrets I most wanted to avoid.
And so, as stories are shared from generation to generation and person to person, regret can become a springboard for healing and rebuilding. I was reminded of a single mother who found love again, after exiting a bad marriage. A 55-year-old who left a toxic workplace and started a business of his own. A 29-year-old who swapped a hefty start-up salary for his dream job in social service.
What regret do I have? There’s a question that appears in the book 344 Questions by Stefan G Bucher. “If you thought of your friends as a collection, what would they resemble?” My intuitive answer was: “A mid-life crisis”. Well, at least now I’ve identified some people I will be spending a little less time with.
(The writer is co-founder at Founding Fuel & co-author of The Aadhaar Effect)
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