People are fond of saying that they have no regrets, but when Frank Sinatra sang that he had too few regrets to mention, it sounded more like a boast from an unreflective mind than an honest assessment of his life. To live without regrets is to have lived without even the possibility of bold choices.
The most important decisions we make in life cannot be made in clarity. The require us to predict futures that are beyond our ability to predict. In the absence of certain knowledge, we imagine our futures, and hope for or despair over what might not turn out to be the consequence of our choice at all.
Maud Muller, a poem written by John Greenleaf Whittier, tells the story of a judge and a woman raking hay who come across each other by a well in the countryside, feel a moment of mutual attraction, but then part, and for the lest of their lives regret not marrying each other.
Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
“Ah, that I were free again!
Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”
Whittier concludes with the observation:
Pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
Pity us all, indeed. The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard quipped that regret is inevitable no matter what choice we make, given that we can never know the truth of the road not taken.
“Marry, and you will regret it,” he wrote. “Don’t marry, you will also regret it. Marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it. Weep over it, you will regret that too. Laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it. Believe her not, you will also regret it… This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
A popular satire of Whittier’s poem confirms Kierkegaard’s observation. In the satire, Maud Muller and the judge marry, and then end up regretting their union.
