I have already posted this once in a similar thread, but thought I would post it again as it quite relevant to the article and others who have not seen it before may appreciate it:
"Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges:
If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.
I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; Don't lose the now.
I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me.
But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.
I read the book "meditations" from Marcus Aurelius recently. It's very interesting to note that the human condition hasn't changed that much.
Here are a couple of quotes related to the article.
1. "How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks." -- Marcus Aurelius
2. Work will always be considered a waste of time when you think about it later if you don't enjoy doing it now.
Who thinks those hours debugging + testing X piece of software in language Y about 10 years ago which is now replaced by code Z wasn't a waste of time?
It was fun then though.
3. "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now."
-- Marcus Aurelius
4. No comments. True friends are amazing human beings to have around. Often better than your own blood.
5. "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature. " -- Marcus
We could all use some philosophy, it helps when things go to shit.
> Who thinks those hours debugging + testing X piece of software in language Y about 10 years ago which is now replaced by code Z wasn't a waste of time? It was fun then though.
Indeed, and things that build your skills and character always have some value.
> "If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." -- Marcus Aurelius
This is one of my favorite quotes from Meditations. It can really be used to hack your mental state anywhere.
Hong Kong, massive crowds and people dart in front of each other, bump into each other, kind of rudely by the standards I was raised. I was getting frustrated. Then I said - ah, let me make this into a game, I will see how quickly I can get through the crowds without being bumped into. I will play like this like a video game.
BAM - frustration gone. It became fun, entertaining, and almost relaxing, actually.
"How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks." -- Marcus Aurelius
Y'see, this is the problem I have with Marcus Aurelius. It must have been relatively easy for him to not care what other people think. For those of us who aren't the goddamn Emperor of Rome, well, we occasionally have the sorts of practical issues which didn't affect him so much.
I was also recently reading some of the letters of Seneca. He spends nine tenths of his time talking about how awesome it is to be a stoic emotionally detached from material posessions as well as the ups and downs of life, but the remainder letting slip his day-to-day concerns overseeing his vast estates, huge wealth and thousands of slaves.
Are there any good stoic philosophers who weren't fabulously wealthy?
"It must have been relatively easy for him to not care what other people think."
I don't think you understand how difficult it was to be an Emperor! An Emperor who was unpopular could be assassinated. An average Joe Soap who is unpopular may have rows with his family or work colleagues but is not usually murdered. Being an Emperor raised the stakes and the paranoia.
Though he predates Stoicism by a bit, I think Diogenes of Sinope [1] did a fine job of practicing what he preached. Also, while Stoicism might be difficult to accept through the conduit of someone like Marcus Aurelius, he was strongly influenced by and frequently quoted Epictetus [2], who also fits your criteria to a tee.
Sometimes I think that I might be one of the few people who will be on my deathbed, regretting not working harder.
When I look back on my life, it's mostly been unfinished projects, or good ideas that didn't get far.
I've always been told how much potential I have, and I even feel this in myself. But so far, there's not a lot to show for it. Sometimes I've spent years not doing much of anything except looking at sunsets, walking in parks, reading books, and being creative, and all the things that are supposed to make life wonderful. These idle years weren't all a bowl of cherries (mostly it was due to depression) but it still wasn't so different from the slow sort of lifestyle exalted above. And I still find it lacking.
We only have a limited time here, and in our age, individuals have extraordinary leverage. Isn't that also a reason to try as hard as we can to make some kind of dent in the universe? If I forgo a few sunsets, but make a thousand people's lives better, did I really do it wrong?
When it comes to regrets, the literary image that stays with me comes from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This part is usually omitted from popularizations and films. Marley's ghost has delivered the warning about the three spirits, but also shows him a vision of spirits wandering the earth:
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Well said, neilk. I always have mixed feelings when reading about the wisdom of people who are dying. I don't doubt that they feel the way they say they feel at that point, but are their judgments relevant to how they WOULD HAVE felt for years, not weeks, back when they still had years to live? On their deathbeds, when they value family so much more than career, they wish they'd spent more time on the former, less on the latter. But if they had actually lived that way for decades, would they have been any happier? Can we know for sure? They might be romanticizing the time they could have spent with family, but didn't, and underestimating the discouragment of living with the professional consequences of "spending less time at the office," while successful coworkers were spending more.
I suspect that the real key to success in life over all is to carefully identify your priorities and to deliberately, passionately, and courageously pursue them, rather than being governed by accident, convenience, fear, and inertia.
Well, I wasn't talking about a career. I was talking about working harder, and having achievements you could be proud of. That's not the same thing.
I think it's been established beyond doubt that a successful career doesn't make you happy. Plenty of researchers have looked into the correlation of income to happiness, and above the poverty line it's pretty flat.
Reminds me of the BBC Radio 4 'Desert Island Discs' interview with Sir Tom Blundell. It was several years ago, and I don't have a transcript, so this is a vaguely remembered paraphrase ...
He was researching protein structure in an X-ray crystallography lab and was working long evenings and nights. Eventually his wife gave him the ultimatum to make a choice between his work and her. He chose work and got a divorce. He said he was incredibly relieved to be free of the guilt he felt neglecting her while he worked at the lab, and threw himself into the research with a new-found energy and determination. Shortly afterwards he he discovered the structure of insulin.
There are billions of mediocre marriages in the world, but structure of insulin is only discovered once.
In retrospect, he sounded like he thought he made the right decision to spend less time with his family.
Yes, and I wasn't talking about one's income, but success at one's "work". The "achievements you can be proud of" will mostly be in the area of what you "do" since most achievements you can be proud of take a great deal of time and, as you say, "working harder", or they wouldn't be a source of much pride. What you spend a great deal of time working hard at is, for the most part, your "work", what you "do" at that stage in your life.
>"I think it's been established beyond doubt that a successful career doesn't make you happy...[very limited] correlation of income to happiness...."
Dan Gilbert's work, applies to "achievements you can be proud of" in general, not just one's income, so if you think it's relevant, then you can stop worrying about working harder. It won't permanently raise your "baseline happiness". But Gilbert's work, and the work he cites, is only "established beyond doubt" in the popular press, not in cog sci, where there is still a lot of wiggle room left and a lot of debate going on.
I like Gilbert's work overall, though, and it is one of the reasons I am expressing skepticism about the validity of the deathbed wish for "less time at the office". It might depend on how narrowly one thinks of "career" or "at the office" or "working" (I mean it more broadly), but if Gilbert has shown anything, it is that we seldom know how a given change really would make (or have made) us feel after a while--we just think we know.
Having a successful career doesn't necessarily have to correlate with monotonically increasing income (although that's how most people perceive the phrase).
>Sometimes I think that I might be one of the few people who will be on my deathbed, regretting not working harder.
The saying goes that on the deathbed no one regrets not spending more time in the office. I take that to mean "donating more of their time to some company", not spending time working/creating. That's how it will be with me. I'll wish that I wouldn't have had to waste so much time solving boring solved problems for money instead of doing the things I was interested in doing. Things that actually had a chance of a real impact, even if small.
What is causing your feeling of wasted potential? Why do you feel your potential needs to be fulfilled anymore than anyone else's? Why make yourself so unhappy because you haven't achieved greatness? One of the crazy things about the age we live in is that you're no longer just competing against the most successful person in your little neck of the wood. Because of how incredible our ability for mass communication is, we now compare ourselves to the luckiest, most beautiful and most gifted people of our age. It's almost like the media is quickening the pace of social evolution...and it's causing more social anxiety than you can poke a stick at.
Hey it doesn't matter that you're not Steve Jobs or Bob Dylan or Mahatma Gandhi...Those guys lived the jackpot of the human lottery (in terms of making a difference to the rest of us).
something I've learn't over the years is that you rarely make headway against a problem by struggling against it, in the way that you will be engulfed in quicksand the more you thrash. Generally acceptance and relaxation will bring quicker resolution...a lesson that is at odds with the modern hollywood fairy tale of one person struggling against improbable odds.
The universe is massive, we are microscopic...our achievements are ephemeral and our lifetimes are over in the blink of an eye. There are thousands of forgotten civilisations, vanished into the fog of history, taking with them the endeavours of their citizens...Happiness and inspiration come when you're not looking for them. They are not the sole domain of Hollywood or silicon valley. They really are found in everyday moments, that if you're always focusing too far in the future, or on things you don't currently have, you walk right past them.
Also, surely the image of the phantoms wandering the earth, chained to their safes is meant to convey a similar message to the article??
My life is pretty great right now. To some extent I already have the life I want. I can use my skills appropriately, it does have a big impact, and my workplace is totally understanding about reshuffling work hours for a better quality of life.
My regrets are mostly about what I did or haven't done in the past. I'm in my late 30s now, and I am having to face the fact that I don't have the energy I did in my 20s. Instead my youth was wasted on wrestling with depression in various forms, causes that didn't deserve it, or companies that ultimately flushed my work product down the toilet.
Perhaps my "dent in the universe" comment makes you think I want to be Steve Jobs... not really. Actually I am convinced that if you become famous, your success is probably of the wrong kind.
My take is that the sunsets would be a replacement for the less-fruitful things one does in life - watch mindless TV, spend a lot of time on hygiene, [enter time-wasting task], etc. I don't think it's a replacement for actually accomplishing dreams.
It sounds like if you actually have passions to accomplish things, then by all means do whatever you can to bring yourself to act now. You're in the minority here and should be thankful. I say act before you become TOO comfortable.
My guess is that once you do start accomplishing your goals, that feeling of "there's not a lot to show for my life" will decrease immensely. At that point I'd be curious if you'd have the same outlook.
I wonder if there is a way to bring realizations born of other people's experiences home in any meaningful way. I sometimes think about what advice I'd give my 17-year-old self if I had to attend college again, but I admit that the younger me likely wouldn't have listened. It's hard to know what to value in the moment, and I find it's equally hard to absorb what others with the benefit of hindsight tell you. I'd bet that none of these expressed regrets really surprises any of us, but chances are we'll all have the same ones on our own deathbeds -- despite knowing better.
People will always need to learn on their own time and in their own way. The best thing you can do for someone is give them a safe environment to make mistakes.
If you've raised your 17 y/o in a way that has imbued him with the principles behind your realizations, there's no need to give him any specific advice about college. Passing on that knowledge is not about specific advice: it's about the way you raise your children; about the way you counteract what 'society' teaches them it expects and freeing them to make choices that will make them happier instead of what makes others happier.
Heh, I was talking about my 17-year-old self, not my 17-year-old child (a terrifying thought). My point was more that a lot of advice has a catch-22-ish quality in that only experience makes its truth sink in, by which time it's often too late.
Here are some things I wish I understood when I was 17:
1. Being "unique" doesn't mean trying to alienate everyone else. Many of the people that you meet, and who seem simple or uninteresting, have a great story to tell or a special talent to share. So, trying to "fit in" a little bit and getting to know lots of people doesn't make you a lesser person in any way; it makes you greater for the broader perspectives that you will get.
2. As you begin to learn to find something of value in each person, also begin to learn to find something of value in the work that you do. Stubbornly refusing to do homework only hurts you, and proves nothing. This is the best time to begin developing the discipline required to focus completely on a mundane task and finish it as quickly as possible; if you can get the hang of that, then there's no job you can't master.
3. Do not talk yourself out of saying "hi" to that girl. You're missing out on a lot of fun, it won't hurt you, and the sooner you start practicing this the sooner you'll get the hang of it.
4. Make sure you maintain a healthy balance in your life. Working all day behind a computer and then going home to play around with a computer until the early morning will eventually cause you to burn out and completely disrupt everything you have in order to feel healthy again. Even though you enjoy it now, you're better off leaving some time for learning how to work on a car, or running around outside, or socializing; then you'll have something to do when you can't stand working on a computer anymore.
5. Most of all, spend less time on the internet. In 10 years you'll barely remember any of the message boards that are so important to you now; you'll have trouble remembering many of the people that you associate with online; you won't be certain exactly what it was you did with all your time online. If you want to socialize, meet some people in person; if you want to learn something, start with a book; if you want to waste some time, try another hobby; and if you want pornography, try finding a girl to say hi to instead.
6. Oh, and finally: you probably won't heed any of this advice anyway, because you're irrationally stubborn, determined to do things your own way, and still struggling with some bad habits that you refuse to get help with. That's OK. You'll be fine so long as you keep pushing yourself a little bit every day.
I'm sure none of these apply to you, but I wished I knew them 15 years ago. :-)
3. Do not talk yourself out of saying "hi" to that girl. You're missing out on a lot of fun, it won't hurt you, and the sooner you start practicing this the sooner you'll get the hang of it.
I agree, but I would extend it beyond "that girl" and say that it applies to anyone that you think seems interesting. Everyone craves human interaction and almost everyone has a story to tell. Don't be afraid to say hello.
Another bit I would add is to avoid high debt. This will be hard because our entire society is set up to take on debt in your college years and then pay it off once you get a good job afterward. I'm 26 now, and I have nearly $60K in debt. I have to pay a minimum of $1000 a month on those debts, while my rent, utilities, and other costs typically come in under $1000. If I didn't have debt, I could bartend 10 nights a month and make enough to live on. Instead, I work 40-50 hours a week in a tech job that I hate, leaving me thoroughly uninspired and unmotivated to do personal programming work once I get home.
My grandmother gave me similar advice and I didn't take it to heart. All I thought was, "I can work my butt off now at $5-8 an hour, or I can take on debt and pay it off after school when I'm making $50-70K per year." Your future self will be pretty annoyed at you if you use this same rationalization.
"In 10 years you'll barely remember any of the message boards that are so important to you now."
I couldn't disagree more. The majority of my closest friendships and professional opportunities have come from time spent on the Internet. I'm probably an extreme case, but people "on the Internet" are no more real than people you meet face-to-face, and online friendships can and do turn into real-life friendships, and vice versa.
Agreed, I met a few of my business partners on the 'net. Then proceeded to meet them in London earlier this year. They're great friends now, and I'm sure they'll continue to be for the rest of my life.
Great list. Just a few more items I wish I'd realized at 17.
1. When you go to college study something you're interested in. I studied math and found it a challenge but I wasn't passionate about it. If I had a do-over, I'd double in computer science and music.
2. Keep in mind that whatever you choose to study has a "business" side to it. The business side is how you earn a living in that industry. Go into your chosen field understanding how you will earn a living. Reaching out to established people is the best way to learn about it and develop a network to help you.
3. My parents have their own issues but they are "normal", meaning not systematic abusers of any kind. They did understand what I was going through at 17 - I just felt I was unique.
PG wrote a fantastic essay that I wish my 17 yo self had read. (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) Of particular note is the following paragraph.
"Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies."
The problem is that almost everyone is lopsided in some way: they excel at something, and are deficient in other things, but almost always in unique ways. Often, the time that they lack in other areas has caused them to grow in others, and it's that growth that gives them an edge in life. Most nerds know this: often they have exchanged social skills for technical skills by the choice of how they spend their time, and how that choice reinforces itself because of how comfortable they feel in different situations.
So many of the things you learn, things you'd like your 17 year old self to know, are things that other 17 year olds already know; and vice versa.
All I can really say is to explore the boundaries, do things that stretch yourself, that scare you, to minimize the risk of getting caught in local maxima. Learn to understand how your mind plays tricks on you, tries to stop you from growing. Think of e.g. showing an older grandparent how to use a PC, and of how difficult they find it, how they can't play with it, and learn on their own, because they lack the confidence; and how frustrating it can be when you know it's not actually hard, and all they need to be is open and playful. Keep that in mind when you think something is too hard or that you're not good at it; watch out for your own mind telling you to give up.
> So many of the things you learn, things you'd like your 17 year old self to know, are things that other 17 year olds already know; and vice versa.
Indeed, and many parents make a mistake by not realizing this.
They think about what they missed in their lives (e.g. money) and they want their children to have it, so they force them to go to med school and make their lives miserable by being too strict about studying and discipline.
They never look at what they themselves (the parents) had and took for granted (e.g. freedom, social life) and they don't see that their children don't have these things. The parents might even view these things as unimportant, because after all, they had a social life in their youth, but it didn't earn them any money! So it's better for their children to not have a social life, but instead get a good career so that they can earn money!
I have met quite a few patients that were undergoing palliative care for their treatments and I heard a lot of the same.
One recurring theme I found was that ministers and priests always ended up doubting or renouncing their faith. It was terribly depressing.
Whenever I think back it always reminds me to spend more time with my family- they provide the best support in these sort of situations and close families always had a happier "vibe".
Probably a combination of things, but I suspect one reason is, from a relatively young age they make themselves a standard bearer for a belief system and from then on are never allowed the freedom to question it.
They spend their lives attempting to persuade others of the truth of a belief system that many people naturally question as they mature, but priests/ministers have to suppress that tendancy.
It's not until they're on their deathbed do they realize how trapped they were their entire lives, how invested in being trapped they were, and resent it.
Reminds me of the scene at the end of No Coutry For Old Men:
Sheriff Bell: "I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come inta my life somehow.
This is very, very true. Ministers of most all religions are among the loneliest of the lot. Because confidence is crucial to their social function and because people breed politics (i.e., backstabbing), many feel they cannot have friends in their congregations/parishes/communities/whatever. Too often they are right.
Would it be helpful to create a forum or community site specifically for them? Then they can vent and bond anonymously, or with people far away who don't have conflict of interests with them.
Some old Buddhist sayings is "Concepts act as robbers, consciousness becomes waves". So, one should avoid memorizing sayings and living inside conceptual consciousness. ^_^
Concepts are just tools. The map is not a territory.
That's extremely interesting; I've never before heard of priests and ministers renouncing their faith on their death beds. Do you know of any article delving into this?
That's what a Geriatric doctor, I consider a friend, who saw many "humans" dying told friends & I once at a dinner I remember. When I said most of us when dying will regret things they did not achieve like a book, a business, a house, works of art, scientific discovery, something that we could be proud of. He said to me "hey, you may know better in your 30s, in my experience most people before they die they regret not things but other people; not having spend more time with their children, not having forgiven their father or mother, not having told them how much they loved them before they died...". I personally like that post but I think my doctor friend would say: "too many words".
I now have a little son and I do a startup, in both cases, I make effort to remember what this doctor friend told me, "one word,
It's better to optimize your life around what you value now, not a prediction of what your old, dying self might value differently. Because your prediction is unlikely to be right, and you're probably making better decisions now than while facing death.
70 years from now you may think differently. I'm not saying that as a bad thing, or in a condescending way, merely to point out that sometimes, we truly cannot know what looking death in the face feels like. And that our thoughts on various things - all sorts of things - change when we finally do.
i'm not saying this is how things should be. i'm just pointing out that it seems no one has the option to "work less". our only options seem to be between killing ourselves working to remain "employable", or simply becoming unemployed.
I try to keep the basic premise of Zen close to heart: 'live in the moment'. Not only in the narrow sense of being present in the moment, but also in a wider sense.
It's easy to live with sentiments such as: if I work just a bit more, I can have a nice house in fifteen years. Once I can buy a Mac Pro, I will really be productive.
The cold fact is that life can end quickly. The present moment is the only thing we have, so treasure it ;). Of course, that's not always easy...
I've thought about this a lot. Say you really manage to live in such a way that you won't have these regrets. Wouldn't you, then, regret not pursuing a career? Or the thrill and excitement of climbing a ladder (hey, just putting it out there)? Not to mention that the "fulfilling your own dreams" regret is probably impossible to avoid by merely fulfilling your dreams.
I would love to hear the regrets of people that have lived a life in such a way that they don't have these modern regrets.
Yes, you're right, assuming that fulfilling your dream is not compatible with pursuing your career.
After working two post-college years at a top software company, I quit the cushy life and lived life by trial and error and my plans only went as far as 3 months ahead. 11 years later I still don't know which country I'll be living or working out of within the next 3 months.
Yes I did start to regret losing out on some of the structure, discipline, and optimal professional self-improvement path of living the life that society hands you. I feel I have the experience of a guy 6 years my junior. On the other hand, I know more about myself than my peers because I tried so many things and tested myself under so many different environments.
Looking back, I don't think I would have made a different choice but I would spent my leaves (from the typical path) a lot more directed and focused. I think I could have learned about life and myself in a quicker way just by doing things instead of just being.
But of course, learning to be -- and breaking automatic habits of action -- is the key to being happy as well.
As you guessed, there is no right or best answer.
But again, if your career and your dreams are one and the same, then this one dimension could be resolved.
The problem is this assumes you are able to predict now what a later version of yourself will regret later, which isn't possible. Every decision creates a different you which will value different things. A path that he takes now because of his imagined future no-regret prediction may have prevented him from taking a path from which he would have ended up learning something much more, which would have a completely changed his judgements about what he would regret. No-regret is a good aspect of making decisions, but he might want to through in a few principles and values into the mix as well.
The article is a bit too short in my point of view, I wish there were a bit more stories told in. It feels a bit cold in that form.
This is a very good article nonetheless. I think this is a good goal to be conscious of what is missing in one's life for feeling satisfied at the end. If you are aware of the trade-off you do and why, it's probably easier to be OK with it at the end.
Many good submissions probably get missed because they don't generate an initial interest and most of us that don't have a lot of time won't be on the lookout trying to filter new posts but checking the stuff that has already been up voted a lot.
I like this article. I wish, however, that it didn't include the little interpretations in the second half of each section. I think it would be more powerful, and honest, if they weren't there.
I guess it remains to be seen conclusively when I fall terminally ill or get close to death of old age, but in my mind, it is not possible to have a life without some kind of theoretical regrets. Every choice you make to spend every moment a certain way is necessarily mutually exclusive with spending it any other way, and there are only so many moments and so many things one can realistically do.
I'm quite positively certain that if asked to reflect on all the things I regret near death, and truly chose to entertain the question from that angle, then I would find something to regret no matter how I lived my life until that point. There will always be could-have-beens, should-have-beens, what-ifs and maybe-if-I-did/didn'ts.
Furthermore, in a practical sense, life is an economically bounded experience; life in a world with finite resources, finite time, and within a society of other people always entails strong elements of concession, compromise and accommodation. You cannot lead a purely hedonistic life unconstrained by material or political limitations. What you do will always be subsumed to some extent by exigencies you would rather not have, by the needs and wants of others, by nature, and various forces you can't control. So, I don't think it's intelligible to implore people to "lead a life without regrets."
I'm not saying there isn't wisdom in being aware that life is short, and you only get one, and that there are some things you will wish you had done if your life ends up being a lot shorter than you expected. However, it seems to me that an important part of finding peace is acknowledging and coming to terms with the objective facts of the human condition and the inescapable psychological truths that accompany them. Seeing your existence as it is and not as it could hypothetically be is an important pillar of peace and comfort for the soul. The reality is, you will always have "regrets": there are always infinite alternate possibilities for any conditional branch, there are practically infinite variables.
"Live a life you won't regret" is the wrong way to look out at the world and your relationship to it. A more constructive approach may be to say, "Lead a good life," whatever that means to you. It is not logically equivalent to "lead a life about which you will never wish something could have been different."
Edit: Also, it is important to emphasise the critical distinction between a) regretting that you had not done something differently, in that all it would take for you to not regret it is to have made a different - and equally accessible - choice, versus b) regretting that you could not have done something differently, in the sense that you wish circumstances or conditions had been such as to make possible or make more likely that you could have made - and actually carried out - a different choice.
It's not so much being satisfied that every choice you made in life is the best one, but, being satisfied with who you are today (on the whole), coming to understand that who you are is the sum of every choice you've made, every relationship you've entered into, and every experience you have had. Change anything in that chain, and you are somebody different.
As long as you haven't lived the life of Methuselah (nearly a thousand freakin' years to get on with something, and the only thing posterity has to say about him is that he had sons and daughters before he died[1]), as long as you've tried to participate in your own life and haven't found a reason to loathe who you are, then there is no room, really, for the what-ifs or the coulda-shouldas.
[1] I'm no Bible literalist (or believer, for that matter), but I think that was the point the writer was trying to get across as a moral lesson.
Yep, be satisfied with who you are today (on the whole) and who you are on the day of your death. Recogonize now, the urge to speculate on what more you could have done as just another urge. Naturally, when one is dying and their own life is becoming scare in their own estimation, their longing for meaningful activities is going to be heightened. I'd argue that the more one has experienced in life, the more intense this longing will be. How many times can one go around and say final farewells to cherished friends? Never enough!
I try to read a lot of fiction, old and new, but I know that when I'm close to death, I'm liable to be choked up about those dozen or so books that I never got around to reading. Someone who doesn't like fiction will probably not think at all about what they never got around to think about reading. We're all that way about our own set of cares and don't cares, so none of the wishes and regrets are ever cosmically meaningful anyway.
Usual meaning of regrets are things you really wanted to do at the time, had a chance to try, did not and didn't do anything else that was particularly exciting. Then felt a nagging about it your whole life, which only gets worse when you're out of time.
If you took an alternate path that made you happy, you probably won't have regrets. If your life was crappy, you will have regrets about lots of little things. But a good life means whatever regrets you have will be minor curiosities, not severe psychological problems.
The bits that resonated with me were the references to "courage", i.e. overcoming one's fears in order to do that which would make oneself happier, more fulfilled etc. When I think of "regrets", I think of this wish that I'd overcome more of my own fears of other people's reactions, fear that the universe would not somehow provide at some minimum level etc. in order to try to follow my own dreams and passions.
At least if you try and things don't work out, you won't regret never having made the effort to seize the opportunity.
Interesting how the answers to "what will I wish I'd have done now in 5 years?" and "what will I wish I'd have done now on my deathbed?" can be so different.
The second one is better, I think. With the first, you never stop.
This brings up an interesting point: should we trust people about their deathbed regrets?
I mean, let's face it. You're lying there, surrounded by your relatives, and everybody is sad. You're going to want to say something life-affirming about how you wish you'd spent more time with your children or smelled more flowers or listened to the wind blowing through the trees or something like that... something that sounds appropriate for the situation, and something that people will think well of you for.
You don't want to say "I wish I'd married a different woman" or "I should have stopped after my first two children" or "If only I'd gone to law school", even if those are your deepest regrets. There's a certain amount of social pressure to only talk about pleasant life-affirming things, so that's pretty much what you're going to get.
On the other hand, if someone has been lying all their life, if they're ever going to tell the truth, it's going to be on their deathbed.
This idea actually appears in our legal system: in court, hearsay (Person X testifies that they heard Person Y say something about Event Z) is usually rejected because there's no way of knowing whether Person Y was lying, even if Person X was truthful. But there are exceptions for circumstances under which Person Y is considered likely to be telling the truth. One of them is a dying declaration; statements made on a deathbed.
After a potentially fatal car accident, a councillor suggested Victor Frankl's book "Man's search for meaning". I'd highly recommend it.
On the other hand, I'm not convinced that anyone who hasn't faced death can really understand life. You can talk to people and they'll nod and agree but they won't understand. My suggestion for living a fulfilling life would be to nearly die every 5-10 years. It's the only thing powerful enough to remind you what is important about life.
I'm with the "never have any regrets" crowd. The biggest regret should be wasting your valuable time unproductively regretting stuff when you don't have long left to live and could, instead, be preparing yourself and enjoying the company of those close to you.
I find the implied converse of this quote (and its more usual version, applying to work) less than convincing. I've had more than my fill with my parents, thanks; I don't wish they had spent less time working and more time with me. I think there's a selfishness in that, a narcissistic desire to own more of the lives of your children, who, ultimately, are going to break free of you, and live their own lives.
I am sorry for being harsh... but I think is the present neglected version of yourself that does not want to hang around with your parents.
And yes, it would be foolish from them to expect, having not devoted enough time to your infant/child version, to try to compensate by devoting unwanted attention to your adult self.
However, it has been proven once and again. Children were not meant to be put in daycare. They were meant to be grown within an extended family environment (complete with elder siblings/cousins to look up to and younger siblings/cousins to look after).
FWIW, my parents were an actor / community theatre director and author / scriptwriter respectively. The nature of those kinds of work means that they were almost always at home.
"Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges:
If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.
I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; Don't lose the now.
I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me.
But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.