From past men to my career, I’m learning to live with my many regrets

Lately, I’ve been thinking about regrets. This is partly because I’ve been reading celebrity apologies, and partly because of a parking fine that arrived yesterday in the mail.

If I let my mind wander to my past mistakes, I can come up with quite an impressive list. I’ve spent way too much time with men who were undeserving of my affection, I’ve messed up great career opportunities, and I’ve traumatised my kids in a thousand tiny ways. Oh, and I unwittingly parked in a loading zone. I really should read the fine print on those signs.

I don’t like regrets. They are a special form of self-torture. A regret is a desire to change the past, a wish to go back in time and do things differently. It is the emotional equivalent of beating your head against a brick wall: you’re never going to knock down the wall, but you will get a bloody sore head.

Avoiding regrets is no easy feat. The only viable way is to be perfect at all times. If I can do everything right, and make good choices at every turn, then I will make no errors of judgment that can haunt me later in life. The problem with this option, of course, is that human beings are fallible, and I am eminently human. I rarely get through a day without at least a minor misstep, whether it’s snapping at a loved one, writing something stupid on the socials or parking in an (albeit ambiguously marked) illegal zone.

So, how do we imperfect people deal with regret? Well, we could travel back in time, return to the moment we made our worst decisions, and do them over differently with the wisdom of hindsight. This is tricky to do in practice, due to the laws of physics, but easy and satisfying to do in theory. I used to spend hours playing out scenarios from my past with better, more tantalising endings. If I could overcome scientific hurdles and create a time machine, I could nip all my regrets in the bud.

Still, as appealing as this prospect is, it may not solve the problem. Sure, I could undo some of the mistakes I’ve made, but I’d probably just make new mistakes in the process. It takes me time – sometimes years – to realise I’ve made the wrong decision, so it’s possible my new choices might end up to be poor ones as well. I could avoid one relationship with a seriously sneaky man and end up with another who is unsuitable in different ways. I might take that job I turned down years ago, only to miss out on writing a best-selling book. I might avoid parking in that illegal spot, only to get nabbed for speeding on the way home.

It’s often easier to forgive other people who have wronged us than it is to forgive ourselves. Still, we all deserve forgiveness, and I try to be at least as kind to myself as I am to others.

I could spend so much time travelling backwards and forwards in time, trying to get things right, that I’d never march on into the future.

Ultimately, I need to learn to live with my regrets. We all do. We simply can’t avoid them. The good news is we can learn from our regrets – if we’re prepared to own our mistakes. My regrets tell me where I’ve gone wrong in my life, from dating certain types of men, to losing my temper, to not looking carefully at parking signs. I promise not to make those mistakes again, and sometimes, I even succeed.