Dealing with Regret

Pic from Pixabay

In psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory, a sense of fulfilment is the sign of a happy old age. As one moves into the latter half of his/her sixties, if one feels contented with one’s own life so far, the old age is going to be ‘cool’. Otherwise, discontentment or even despair is one’s lot in the last years of life.

Very few may achieve a sense of complete satisfaction with their own life towards the end. When we look back, there may be causes for regrets. I am a sexagenarian myself racing to the final stage of life as listed by Erikson. When I look back, I can see blunders after blunders committed by me in my youth as well as my adulthood. My growing into maturity was a slow and tedious process. Painful too, quite often. But am I going to sit down and feel regrets? No.

“Regret is a temptation,” says Joan Chittister, author of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully. Regret, she goes on to say, “entices us to lust for what never was in the past rather than to bring new energy to our changing present.”

Chittister speaks about two kinds of regrets. One is regretting our failures and the other is regretting our life choices. The former can lead to growth because every such regret carries with it a lesson of life. We can better ourselves by internalising those lessons. We acquire new values.

But regretting our life choices is of no use whatever. If only I had not made the choice of going to work in Shillong! It’s no use thinking this way. Because my going to Shillong to find a job in those days was a sort of necessity. I had tried many other alternatives. Shillong was the best option at that time given my personal situation. Why regret now what could not have been avoided and what can never be changed now anyway, though Shillong remains as a deeply etched scar in my heart?

Do not regret; make a choice. That is how we move on. That is how we grow towards Erikson’s sense of fulfilment.

If we start regretting our life choices, we risk the loss of our future, says Chittister. We drain new possibilities. What has happened, has happened. Let it be. Accept it. Learn the lesson from it. And move on.

Making mistakes is natural. To err is human, as Alexander Pope puts it. Learning the lesson from each mistake is what carries us towards what Erikson calls integrity, wholeness. If you can answer ‘Yes’ in your old age to the question: ‘Did I live a meaningful life?’ it would mean that life has gifted you wisdom. Such wisdom is the ideal reward of old age. Mind you, it is ‘meaningful’ life, not successful or contented life, that Erikson speaks of.

It doesn’t mean, of course, that we become so wise in our old age that we won’t make any further mistakes. We are human even at the age of 95. Chittister was 70 when she wrote the book mentioned here. She says in the introduction to that book that she reserves the right to modify her views at the age of 90. What that means is she is still learning at 70. We are all learners at any time in our life. Our life is a constant and continuous process of learning. If we reach Erikson’s stage of wisdom, we are lucky. Otherwise, it’s alright as long as we keep learning.

Do not regret; learn the lesson from the mistake and move on by making the appropriate choices.

PS. I have signed up for the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter, a community of bloggers. Starting today, 1 Feb, I’ll be writing a post each every day of the month on topics taken from Joan Chittister’s manual for the elderly. I do hope that younger people too find these posts meaningful. Your suggestions and any other feedback is welcome in the comments section. I’m a good learner at the age of 64.