I have precious few regrets in my life. I’ve done some very stupid things that I shouldn’t have done and I’ve had some awful personal experiences, but I believe that I learn a little from each screw-up, from each bad relationship, from everything. Those are the experiences that make me who I am today so how can I regret them?
That being said, I do have one…
(1) dating only one boy for all four years of high school. When I finally graduated and got to college, I discovered there was a whole world out there to experience. Unfortunately, I chose to continue that path with my now-ex-husband. In my heart, I knew better, but I chose the easy road then. I could have done better with that one.
Every time I think of something that could potentially be a regret, I start thinking “But then if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.” In truth, I am dizzyingly happy and very, very lucky.
I do regret hurting a couple of people I truly cared about on the way, though. I could have handled things a lot better, but unfortunately that’s something learned only through years of distance and perspective.
Not exactly regrets, but I used to say the three stupidist things I’ve ever done in my life all involve the military (1966-1969). Then add (insert present situation) is pushing up hard from the number 4 slot.
I also used to say 'Everyone should serve in the military, because it gives you a benchmark from which you can say, ‘This is, without a doubt, the stupidist thing I’ve ever done’.
The service experience undoubtably influenced my life, but it also tested my limits, without which, I would probably have gone through life wondering just what I was capable to doing and not doing.
I won’t say what the three things were, because they reveal just how stupid I was.
Not getting out more my first two years of college
Believing my faith’s misguided views on sexuality
Taking so long to learn kanji. I need more willpower.
In general I echo what Ruby said. Regretting something only sees the negative. I may regret something for a brief moment, but I never try to hold onto such a feeling. Instead I just let it pass.
(1) I regret marrying a woman whom, in retrospect, I didn’t really know.
(2) I regret not telling my mother more often that I loved her. I told her every time we talked, and it was the last thing I ever said to her, but if I could go back I’d tell her twice every time we talked.
(3) Not much else. There are small things, like “I wish I’d been born rooting for a better football team than the Atlanta Falcons,” but there’s not much I can do about that. I was born a Falcons fan, and I’ll die a Falcons fan.
I’ve done a lot–A LOT–of stupid stuff in my life, but I can’t say I regret much of it. If I hadn’t done those stupid things, I wouldn’t be who I am now. And, somewhat to my surprise, I like who I am now.
It’s a relief to find people with similar regrets that I have.
I regret not being a more social person and hanging with friends and doing the drinking and recreational drug use that many of my friends have experienced. As stupid as this is not partying when I was young enough to get away with being stupid has left me feeling like an inadequate loser.
I regret not dealing with my fear of intimacy earlier. I can’t seem to allow myself to date and find a relationship.
I regret still being a virgin. I’m twenty eight years old and I think I’ve crossed into freak territory and I don’t think I’ll find a woman who understands.
Not learning to swim at an earlier age
Not being able to go to Uni 'cos my parents were to poor and needed the money I brought in
Meeting that sheep on a country ramble
1: Not having lost my virginity to the porn star whose lawn I mowed.
Regrets 2 through 352 inclusive would all probably be moot if #1 had happened. What’s worse is that years later I discovered that she was interested, but that I “didn’t seem interested”.
Not bonking all the girls I could have when I was 17-18, as now, a decade later, willing females seem to have become as rare as hens with teeth.
Utterly cocking up my first attempt at a master’s degree and then loafing about too long while figuring out to deal with the failure (tentatively planning a second attempt now, when everybody else are already getting their PhD’s or having real jobs where they make real money).
Not going to library school about ten years earlier.
What, we only get three? I have more candidates. Not travelling more when I had the chance. Screwing things up with one particular girl. Then there are the things which I couldn’t really control, I don’t know if those count. Not understanding the real value of money soon enough. Not discovering really good music earlier.
In general, when life is concerned, it seems to me that what I learn from any given attempt at something is precisely what I needed to know before attempting that thing in the first place, in order to not cock it up. Life badly needs a save game feature.
Let’s see… unlike many here, I’ve got multitudes of regrets, and far too much time brood on them. But, for the top three?
Choosing my college based on a desire to go to the same school as a girl I was hot for in HS. Who refused to give me the time of day while we were in HS…
Not letting Lt. Kelso refer me for a major psych eval when I went to him with concerns about paranoia. No guarantees, but earlier detection and treatment may well have been able to keep me from crashing and burning later on.
Screwing up my job with ConEd. Not so much because I liked living down there, but the work was great - important, challenging, and, for me, fun. I’d probably still be just as alone, but at least I’d be gainfully employed.
Like others have mentioned, I have few real regrets. I’m of the “everything I’ve done got me here” school of thought, and it emphatically doesn’t suck to be me, so…
That said, I can think of two things that might have made my life even better. I wish that I’d been more successful in school, focused on my education, and given more thought to a career, because then I might be doing something that I love, instead of something that is tolerable and pays my bills.
I also wish that I hadn’t stayed in my previous relationship so damned long. I knew three years into it that there was no way in hell I was ever going to marry him, and by year seven I wasn’t even sure I much liked him anymore, but I stayed nearly another three years out of a misguided sense of obligation, an “I’m only as good as my word” seriousness about commitment, and my natural “well, it ain’t always candy and roses” philosophy of relationships. That was stupid. All of those are good reasons to stick out the bad times with someone you love. There IS no good reason to stay with someone you don’t. I did neither of us any favors there.
That I don’t have a PhD. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to one of the other grad schools that accepted me, rather than UC Santa Cruz. I got along very badly with my advisor at UC Santa Cruz, which is a large part of why I dropped out with a master’s.
That I didn’t seek treatment for depression and anxiety earlier. I should have done it as soon as I was 18 and out of the house and my parents wouldn’t have had to know I was doing it. But I waited ten more years, which I shouldn’t have. Maybe I was wrong about how my parents would have taken it, too. They came to terms with it pretty easily when I did tell them. Though, of course, it’s possible that they changed some in that ten years, as well…
I kind of wish I had looked for another job when I realized that my last job was moving me in a career direction (away from IT and toward programming) that is somewhere I really don’t want to go.
This one for me, too.
I realize it’s not really her fault, years later- everybody has their own ideas about what makes one person “smart” and another not. Her idea includes being able to do arithmetic in your head quickly, which I can’t do, therefore she has trouble thinking of me as smart.
Faithfool–I bet we could have an interesting conversation and both discover we don’t think we regret things as much as we think we do. Your regrets:
Not having gone to college directly after graduating high school.
Not having lost my ‘virginity’ much earlier.
Not having given up on my religion as soon as possible.
My regrets
Going to college directly after high school
Losing my virginity way too early
Waiting so long to give up my atheism
I’ve made many bone-headed life decisions along the way but I truly hesitate to say I regret any of them. Got me where I am now and all that.
But there is one silly thing that when I hear the word regret, I always think about:
Summer 1984, I was 19, thin, tanned and my boyfriend was gone on some family trip for a month. I was spending my afternoons laying by the pool with friends and one day this gorgeous “older” guy (he was probably 23 and looked like Tom Selleck only shorter) came over and started talking to me. He asked if I wanted to go out sometime with him…I replied that I had a boyfriend. He said, well where is he then? I said he was out of town for a few weeks. He said well we could still go out anyway. And I said no. :smack:
So stupid.
Especially because the true regret I had was hanging onto said boyfriend for at least a year and a half longer than I should have.
I dont think I would call them regrets because the choices I made, made who I am. However messed up that is… LOL Though if I could go back and maybe do things differently…
Stay in college. Even though the school sucked, a degree is a degree.
Took control of my life a lot sooner then what I did. At 25 I was still asking my parents for permission to do different things with my life. Talk about control issues.
Stayed in law enforcement. While I like what I am doing now, I often wished I became a police officer. Though that would have to go back to taking care of my body. Staying in school… I’m 30. No way I could do it now.
[ul]
[li]Not staying in college for a couple more years and getting more than just an Associate degree.[/li][li]Wasting a year and a half of my life spending my time and hundreds, if not a few thousand dollars trying to satisfy a greedy, overbearing, selfish and conceited bitch of a girlfriend for whom nothing I did was ever good enough.[/li][li]Going in on a get-rich-quick scheme with a friend of mine.[/li][/ul]
LOL Though if I could go back and maybe do things differently…