Do you have any regrets? It’s one of those questions that’s thrown around so often that we don’t really think about it very much- we tend to develop stock responses and leave it at that. What does it mean, anyway, to regret something? It’s inseparable from hindsight- “looking back now, I wish I hadn’t done that, that was stupid, irrational, and there were undesirable consequences.”

Where I come from, it’s undesirable to be overly fixated on past mistakes, to cry over spilt milk. Regret tends to imply self-pity and helplessness. I’ve met many interesting people who are so turned off by the idea of being weak that they find strength by imbibing an interesting cocktail of stoicism, Buddhist detachment, nihilistic “I don’t give a fuck!” and romantic “Non, je ne regrette rien“. There’s no point worrying about the past, what will happen will happen, live in the moment, et cetera. I was like that for a period of time too- I think because it seemed to impress others, and because it felt genuinely empowering. I regret nothing. It’s something consistent that you can stand behind. It’s a framework that works in most contexts, and it gets you by- better than sitting around moping and feeling sorry for yourself, surely.

Lately though I find that to be a little too simple to satisfy me. There’s not enough computation underlying it, not enough depth- and I feel that I’m missing out something, not doing justice to something.

Living without regrets is easily said, and easily done too- all you have to do to fulfill it is to move forward without ever looking back. But is that really the most effective way of doing things? It’s very easy to get carried away, to keep burning bridges and cutting off ties with the past- and in a sense, it’s hard to grow very much if you’re not looking back, at least some of the time. Before you know it, you find yourself lost and detached, a person outside of time and space, an observer more than a participant.

So that’s the subtlety that needs to be addressed- we shouldn’t be crippled with regret and what-if’s, but we shouldn’t neglect our past, either. We have to accept it with composure, and carry it with us as we move forward. That’s how we grow, surely?

“What if.” I think regrets are directly related with hypothetical possibilities and what-if scenarios. The more you’re able to visualise alternative paths and solutions, the easier it is to regret any particular decision you might have made, any action you may or may not have taken.

One possible symptom of an overly militant “regret nothing” approach to life is a false sense of determinism and certainty- everything that happened a certain way happened for a reason, or perhaps there was no other way that things could have been- whatever it is, there’s no point worrying about it, let’s not even think about it because we have more important and immediate things to worry about. At times I have found myself thinking this way, because it’s very reassuring. “It was necessary for me to go through what I did then to be who I am today, and that’s that.” I think that’s still fairly valid.

But there’s a central truism buried in there that’s not being adequately addressed, and I want to address it now- which is that everything that is, is incredibly fragile. Life itself is a highly unlikely phenomenon. A living creature is a very improbable and fragile thing, atoms and molecules arranged in beautiful patterns that could easily collapse into chaos at any moment. Anything worth paying attention to- a relationship, or a piece of music- is worth so much because it’s so fragile, because the alternatives to what it is are so vast, so infinite, so apparent. Therein lies the appeal of practically anything- a delicious meal or a delicately powerful ballet has us transfixed because it would be so easy for something to go wrong, for there to be a wrong step, a wrong note, a word out of place. A Royal Flush is worth so much more than a Straight, because it’s so much less likely.

Where are we headed with this? Everything is incredibly fragile, and it’s worth is defined largely by what it could otherwise have been. A great conversation is defined a lot by what is unsaid. And the life you lead is defined very much by the lives you are not living.

So I think there is a lot to be appreciated and understood about our lives if we take the time to contemplate the fragility and improbability of it all- firstly the improbability of life itself, and at a more pragmatic level, the unlikelihood of our immediate circumstances, of the specific path that we have chosen so far. It is incredibly important that we contemplate the forks in the road that we have crossed, the choices we have made. “I had no choice,” is a statement we often use without much consideration- we always have a choice, just that many of them seem unpalatable to us and inconsistent with our values and belief systems.

(Rambling about my life begins here, skip if uninterested)

My early childhood was fairly straightforward, defined largely by lots of attention, interaction, reading, communication. It’s hard to tell if such “exposure” shaped me, or my disposition influenced the amount of “exposure” or stimuli that I got- but I was lucky to get what I got, to be born when I was, where I was. My parents encouraged my reading habit, and I made friends early.

My first major fork in the road was when confronted with the Gifted Education Programme. The GEP made me feel and believe that I was part of an elite class, before I ever understood or even came to be aware of all the complications and complexities of such a label. Perhaps if I hadn’t qualified, or chose not to bother with the test, I’d be a simpler man today, with less ambition and daring. (It might be argued that it was these qualities that got me into the GEP in the first place, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t sure of what I was doing when I was a kid- I did the test because I thought it would be fun, and I thought such things were fun because I’d acquired a habit of doing them for fun.)

I definitely would not have developed as much of an entitlement mentality, which would turn out to be one of the main issues I’d have to grapple with and overcome later in my adolescence. My parents may have expected less from me. I’d have stayed in Opera Estate Primary School, have had fewer but closer friends. I would have most likely wanted to go to Temasek Secondary School, because it’s a decent school with a new shiny campus that’s near my house, and it’s where my sister went. I would not have met my girlfriend and most of the high-calibre intellects I’ve been honoured to brush shoulders with. I might have been more street smart, perhaps more athletic- I imagine I might have learnt to breakdance, or play basketball at a higher level. I’d probably have had several girlfriends rather than just one. I would be a very different person.

Before I went to Victoria School, there was a period of time when I really wanted to go to Raffles Institution. That’s an amusing thought that doesn’t really fit very nicely with the narrative I’ve constructed for myself. Victoria School played a substantial role in developing me as an individual who learnt to see himself as a part of something greater, to appreciate brotherhood, camaraderie.  Before I went to Tampines JC, I really wanted to go to St. Andrew’s. There was a period of time when I was very set on dropping out of JC to take a business/engineering course at Temasek Poly. In primary school, I was fairly convinced that I’d someday go to Oxford or Cambridge, though I never really pursued that thought in detail. Before my PSLE, it seemed like life would just continually hand me whatever I wanted.

In JC, I spent lots of time being certain that I ought to study Communication and Information at NTU, and yet afterwards suddenly felt that Political Science at NUS was my calling. It was only fairly recently that I started to feel strongly about not going to University at all- I can’t pretend that it wasn’t at least in some part a response to NUS rejecting me, but it also felt like I was finally coming out of the closet and coming to terms with something that was a part of me since my early childhood- a nagging sense that most of the people who go through our education system have no idea what they’re doing, and the few that do owe their debt to other things outside of that system.

(Rambling of life ends here, continue from here if you haven’t left yet) 

Who am I, then, but a series of decisions? I should not regret any of them, but I should most certainly be conscious of them, and appreciate how they have influenced my life so far, and will continue to influence my life in the future. How often it is that we feel so strongly about something, only to change our minds later on! Why is it that we don’t properly come to terms with this? If we do, we wouldn’t keep asking people about their plans for the future- “I’m not sure, I’m preparing myself to be open to any decent opportunity,” should be an acceptable (if not ideal) answer.

It’s still valid that life should be lived without regrets. But not without contemplation, computation, reflection and awareness. We ought to take the time to seriously come to terms with the fragility and improbability of our lives, to appreciate the beauty and opportunity that permeates every moment. “Regret nothing” shouldn’t be interpreted as “feel nothing”. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that life is lived well when you stand courageously at the edge of chaos, where you put yourself in a place where it would be incredibly easy to regret everything, and then decisively choose not to.

Being blindly optimistic is worth little- being optimistic in spite of all the pessimism and cynicism you carry with you is what makes a difference. It’s not that you regret nothing that makes you interesting, is that you could be regretting everything, but you choose not to.

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!