New PN: The Power of Regret

“Embedded in songs, emblazoned on skin, and embraced by sages, the anti-regret philosophy is so self-evidently true that it’s more often asserted than argued.

Why invite pain when we can avoid it? Why summon rain clouds when we can bathe in the sunny rays of positivity? Why rue what we did yesterday when we can dream of the limitless possibilities of tomorrow?

This worldview makes intuitive sense. It seems right. It feels convincing. But it has one not insignificant flaw.

It is dead wrong.

What the anti-regret brigades are proposing is not a blueprint for a life well lived. What they are proposing is—forgive the terminology, but the next word is carefully chosen—bullshit. Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human.

Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.

And that is not some gauzy daydream, a gooey aspiration confected to make us feel warm and cared for in a cold and callous world. That is what scientists have concluded in research that began more than half a century ago.

This is a book about regret—the stomach-churning feeling that the present would be better and the future brighter if only you hadn’t chosen so poorly, decided so wrongly, or acted so stupidly in the past. Over the next thirteen chapters, I hope you’ll see regret in a fresh and more accurate light, and learn to enlist its shape-shifting powers as a force for good.”