Regret settles into us early. But its meaning shifts over the years.
When we’re young, we regret things we did or didn’t do. The sting doesn’t last long—time wipes the slate clean and we forget, moving on. Young people say “no regrets” with conviction. Sounds good. Nobody seems to stick to it.
As we age, regret takes on a different flavour and hardens into genuine remorse. Individual decisions blur together over the years into something thicker, more persistent. Then it’s not about specific events or choices anymore. It’s about directions we took—or didn’t.
“If only I’d done this or that earlier.” Saved more, eaten better, taken that job or rejected it. Pursued that person or pushed them away. Stayed put or left when I had the chance.
Many older people feel physically and emotionally cemented to their circumstances. What remains is the mind, losing itself in thoughts, mourning those countless past decisions, never finding peace. It does us real damage.
Sure, we should stop this. Live here, now. Understand that we and everyone around us have changed. No point thinking about what we can’t control—we can’t relive the past. But we can use these regretful thoughts to centre ourselves in the present. Without dissolving into self-pity.
Say you’re mourning a decision from 20 years ago. We usually regret the things we didn’t do—because we lacked courage or life simply got in the way.
If that thought has followed you for two decades, that’s a pretty important signal. It still matters to you. But this isn’t really about the decision anymore. It’s about the underlying values and principles that remain important to you. These are signals you can learn from.
You can’t turn back the clock. But listen to those signals and shape your life so that from now on, you have nothing left to regret. Then maybe even in later years, you can say “no regrets” and mean it.
The German original lives at reinergaertner.de, my blog since before most of the internet existed (1997). Translation: AI. Quality control: me, squinting. Apologies in advance.