If you could open an envelope and see the date you'll leave this world, would you?
What if it was tomorrow? What would you do? Would you have regrets?
In Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man," there's a short story "The Last Night in the World." A couple learns the world is going to end at midnight, and yet they carry on with their routine - washing dishes, tucking children into bed, listening to the radio. Upon first read, I saw it as a metaphor for how people can fail to seize the moment, even when faced with finality.
But you can't live every day as if it's your last and still plan for the future. The essence of YOLO, in my view, isn't recklessness, but making the most of each moment, being present, and living with intentionality. Living with purpose.
In that vein, and upon re-read, I interpret the couple in The Illustrated Man as living without regrets. They were always doing exactly what they wanted to be doing.
Many decisions carry significant opportunity costs, some so vast we can scarcely imagine them. I think of my experience in college, and attempt to conceive the alternate universes that might have unfolded had I gone somewhere else. Entire worlds of relationships and growth, forever unexplored.
There is an endless abyss of "what ifs" that extend from every moment in time, and so even the concept of a regret is simply just focusing in on one of those dots, or a few of them.
This is why I'm skeptical of regret minimization as a decision-making framework. While it has merits, it often requires us to make judgments about so much we cannot know. Opportunity cost is important to consider, but our predictions about the future often fail to capture the full scope of the alternative.
Life is filled with decisions, each a juggling act of expected value and costs. Some balls, like your education or career, are made of rubber. Drop them, and they bounce back. Others, like your relationships or health, are made of fragile glass. Drop them and they shatter, and are much more difficult to reassemble. We can't keep all the balls in the air at once, and to throw one high often means letting another fall.
I like this metaphor because it reflects the reality that we must decide what life we want to live and what sacrifices we're willing to make to get there. That there are no universally correct choices, only reflections of our personal values.
This summer, like past summers, was a summer of reflection and decision-making. Some choices required deep contemplation, and a realization that often in life, no matter what path we choose, we may wonder about the road not traveled.
You can make objectively wrong or bad decisions, in hindsight. But it's possible to live with minimal regrets by understanding your reasoning at the time of a decision. And after making a choice, you have to live with it.
So, it's important to make decisions with intention. One of my parents has a parable about this: a king and queen are fighting about where to hang a painting in a castle, and the king finally says "hang it wherever you want" to be done with it. But then every time he walks past the painting, he gets upset, and that's entirely on him. Make sure you're happy with the choice you've made when you make it.
Along those lines, some consider decisiveness the hallmark of success. But true success often lies in discerning which decisions truly matter, and then making the unimportant ones swiftly and giving the crucial ones the contemplation they deserve.
My mom has a long-running book club – and since we share the same Kindle library, I occasionally read them. One such novel was "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig.
In the book, a woman in limbo with many regrets explores infinite variations of her life through a metaphysical library. Ultimately, she discovers that no alternative was inherently better or worse, just different.
It's a powerful reminder not to dwell on regret – the past is immutable, set in stone. What matters is the present. As Sanderson writes, "the most important step a man can take? It's not the first one or the last one, but the next one. Always the next step."
There’s an inverse to regret minimization – a more positive framework through which to view the world. It’s happiness maximization.
When making decisions, consider what path might bring you the most joy, and excites and inspires you. And choose that one.
If you do that every time, even if it later turns out to have been the "wrong" decision, you shouldn’t regret it.
Because in the end, it's not about making perfect choices, but about embracing life, and finding contentment in the journey itself.