Why I Want to Live with Regrets
Recently, my partner moved to our new place in Wilmington, NC. I’ll be there in a couple months, when I’m done thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail.
On the day of the move, I was feeling out of it - sad that I was missing all the firsts. Sitting on the floor to eat pizza since all of the chairs are still packed away. Figuring out where things go. Settling into a new home.
So I made it to the top of a mountain where I could get signal, and called him to catch up. “I’m sad that I’m not there,” I mumbled into the phone.
Static, our constant companion as I’ve made phone calls from mountaintops with spotty service, crackled with my partner’s voice: “I wish you were here too.”
Regret pooled in the bottom of my chest, a thin, clear pool of hurt. Enough to end the hike and fly down to Wilmington? No. But there and worthy of being dealt with? Yes.
I’ve long been out of the habit of taking my own feelings seriously. As I had doubts about my previous marriage: No, you’re just being dramatic. How can you love him so much less than he loves you? As I had daily panic attacks before teaching at the Catholic elementary school that employed me: You’re having a dark night of the soul. Catholicism is truth, whether you feel it or not. You have a duty to teach these kids the same thing.
And now, the instinct to diminish my own feelings continues in the same vein: You did this to yourself. You decided to do this thru-hike. You don’t have the right to feel sad about missing this.
Sometimes, the little voice is not to be trusted. Feeling regret is not only our right - but it’s also a good thing.
Regret means that you’ve chosen to live.
A little over five years ago, I sat in a confessional with my parish priest and begged him to tell me how to reconcile my fascination and respect for other peoples’ religious beliefs, or lack thereof, with the brand of religion that, for the sake of my marriage, I had to keep believing in. I struggled deeply with the Catholic idea that salvation cannot be found outside the church and it’s sacraments. That everyone outside the church’s walls were damned, wrong, misguided. To me this idea seemed horribly self-centered, blind to the nuance of others’ lived experiences.
That priest told me something that still rings true, though I left Catholicism behind when I walked out of that closet.
He told me that regret, and sadness, and conflicted emotions are the asking price of choice. I could choose the church we were sitting in - but I would feel remorse for being part of something that was inherently exclusionary. Or I could choose the world, and lose the comfortable life I’d built within the church’s walls. Either way, I would feel some level of regret - there was no escaping it, there was no perfect state of contentment waiting for me behind door #2.
Ultimately, I chose everything beyond the wall.
When I say that I regret that choice, it doesn’t mean that I would go back and choose differently. I would make the choice again if I had to.
But I did lose the life I’d had, in its entirety. I walked out of the church and never walked back in. My marriage crumbled and I had to start over completely. I now live in a state of comparative uncertainty and naked vulnerability, having lost the protection of the church walls - having come to realize that they never really protected me in the first place.
If I have to call myself anything now, I’m agnostic - I exist permanently in a state of unknowing. Sometimes, I long for that certainty, and sometimes that longing feels much like regret. Life was still conflicted, but simpler then, when I was certain I had all of the answers. I miss the community that belonging to a church offered me. I miss the rituals and incense and beauty and peace of knowing that 1. there is a god, and 2. they love me. If all else failed, I had god. Even if the church required me to fail myself, over and over again.
We all have choices to make that alter the courses of our lives. Do we move across the country, or not. Do we go back for that Master’s degree, or not. Do we have children, or not. Choosing one option requires not choosing the other.
If you choose to not have children, you might feel a pang of regret when your friends start having grandchildren. If you choose to have children, you may one day long for the freedom to pursue other dreams. It doesn’t mean that you would go back and choose differently: It simply means that you made a choice, and in doing so, you chose one life over another.
Regret means that you’ve learned.
There are moments from my past that I remember with such embarrassment and regret that I have to physically shake my head to move on to the next thought. These memories range from less-than-stellar job interviews, flashbacks to my bratty childhood, to even more egregious happenings, such as the few times I joined my university’s Catholic youth group to picket the only abortion clinic in Baton Rouge, certain that I was on a noble mission to save women from themselves.
Everyone has these memories that fill them with a mix of cringe and remorse.
But the gift of cringe indicates one hopeful conclusion: you have changed.
Bad job interviews? I learned from those mistakes. Every job I’ve interviewed for in the past 5 years has resulted in an offer.
Bratty childhood? I’ve grown older and gained perspective on how my similarities to my mother made us butt heads endlessly. The things about her that drove me insane (and still do) are a part of me. I understand myself better, and that’s a good thing.
Anti-choice protest? I can now clearly see the privileged, incorrect belief that I was somehow different from the women whose lives I judged from the cracked sidewalk. Years later, I found myself sitting inside a Planned Parenthood lobby among the same women, needing a screening after my own life had been upended by divorce.
When you look back on your own choices and behaviors with regret, it means that you no longer are that person. If I looked back on times that I was rude to my parents and didn’t feel an ounce of regret, that would mean I had learned nothing about them, or my own shortcomings, from ages 16-28. It would mean that I had remained stagnant.
So the next time a bad memory from the 3rd grade creeps up on you when you’re trying to sleep? Cringe on, reader. Celebrate how far you’ve come. It’s good for you.
Regret means that you’ve loved, and love.
Try as we might, we don’t live up to the perfect calling of unconditional love. We fail our partners, get aggravated, say something mean, and have to reconcile. The beauty of regret in this situation is the way it opens an avenue for growth. For the “hey, that was shitty of me,” and the healing conversation that follows.
But it also teaches us something about ourselves.
When we look back on things we’ve said, done, and believed with regret, we’re looking back on a previous version of ourselves. Or perhaps even an unaligned version of ourselves - where our words, thoughts, and actions didn’t reflect our true values or innermost selves.
My deepest regrets - holding onto Catholicism as long as I did, for example - are always about me betraying my own self. These deeper regrets are for all the times that I didn’t listen to the most true, heartfelt Knowing within me, and instead chose to be comfortable, to be small, to not make a scene.
I think that life is a journey of spiraling inwards to our deepest selves, of understanding our knowing. And I know that as my life continues to unfold and I circle deeper into my own knowing, I’ll collect even more regrets.
What’s one of your deepest regrets? What has it taught you about yourself?
