Today I watched the video below, a TED talk by Kathryn Schulz, journalist and author of the book, Being Wrong. I found its insight into regret compelling and thought-provoking.
In particular, the end of the talk struck a chord with me. Here are Schulz's words:
If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.But what do we do, as elders, with the regrets we have about our lives? There's no Do-Over button (no CTRL-Z, as Schulz calls it), when we get to this age and stage of life. Many of those we've hurt have left this world; we cannot call them and offer our apologies.
Yes, regret is a reminder that we can do better. It's also a reminder that to make much of the time and opportunities we have before us, while we can.
