In the end, we must imagine Sisyphus—the final mirror—happy.
What's going on in your brain is a lot more complicated than this, but I think it's still a meaningful concept?
However, if, at some point, both advisors decided to leave and never come back, and you started thinking about how one of them always gave you wrong advice, and regretting listening to him, then that regret is pointless.
I don't believe in the past. It's much the same if you think about it.
>Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.
If you were to jump in a tardis and were to go to the event that you want to change. 100% of the time you will discover the entire thing was a story in your mind. Something you didn't understand at the time and if you were to 'fix' it. You would end up only harming yourself of today.
>The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.
Regrets of current day are legitimate. Perhaps it's substance abuse, social media. You know in your mind these things are not good. Nobody brags about these things. You know if you were to quit things would be better, but you have current day regrets of not doing so.
Furthermore, perhaps you're a superhuman with no faults. You can also have regrets having not done more. PErhaps you could have started that business or try to get that book published.
Most people I think define regret more abstractly: back in time, <X> was a _mistake_, it shouldn't have happened, _I_ shouldn't have done it that way and consequences came from it either for myself or those I love.
It seems from your response that you're ok with admitting your mistakes which - by the above definition - sounds like you feel regret.
Time travel doesn't exist, ergo regret shouldn't exist. I think what op is saying is they don't ruminate on it and I agree, nobody should. unless you have an established pattern, then rumination is self invoked torture.
This. You play the hand you're dealt — and the hand you're dealt includes your "wiring" (brain anatomy, brain chemistry, etc.) and your "programming" (past experiences, etc.). And you try to learn what you can.
(Warning — tangent:) It all contributes to what I've come to think of as The Great Project [0] of helping to build a universe — where our Conway Game of Life moves (or our Boyd OODA Loop moves, if you prefer) are something like the following:
1. Aspire: Imagine some way in which the world could and should be different than (our mental model of) what it currently is.
2. Act — and while doing so: (A) remain open to new evidence and insights; and (B) seek the best for others as we do for ourselves, because to a certain extent we all operate behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance.
3. Learn: Update the mental model of what the world is, and also the mental model of what the world "should" be.
4. Repeat.
[0] https://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/06/metanarratives_...
Since high school I wanted a spouse and kids (obviously I imagined a good relationship and good kids)
Now I'm in my late 50s and it's not going to happen. I was always hopeful today I'm going to meet someone. That hope has mostly disappeared.
I regret not trying harder in various ways.
However, the perspective I've explained keeps me from dwelling on it for too long. What's done is done, I did the only thing I could do with the information that was available. There is no point in punishing myself (unless it's to remind myself of the lesson). That's what I meant by not "believing" in regret.
That perspective often helps me get out of the self-pitying mood.
As are ones about making an unlikely future come to be. When I find myself sidetracked by those thoughts I now say to myself "Get out of fantasy land where unicorns fart rainbows" and it seems to stop.
Wisdom is gained from making bad decisions.
The thing is, every choice I've made, even "the wrong ones", have put me in a better position overall. Perhaps I could be richer, but I don't really care about that. Maybe I just view everything in a positive light and ignore all the good things that could have been, who knows.
A regret is a mistake that you don’t want to make in the future only it’s projected into the past. “I regret having done that because if I went back to the past, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done that”
You’re also inviting other people not to regret their choices even when those decisions negatively affect you.
At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind. Every mistake I've made has brought some information in my mind that wouldn't have been brought otherwise. Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless.
The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding yourself of some mistake that should not be repeated in the future. Alas, most regrets I see written by other people are things that will not repeat, e.g. spending your youth doing <X> instead of <Y>, not talking to your <Z> enough, not investing in <W> before its price went rockets... There's just no point.