The question always comes up. Somebody will ask it or we will ask it to ourselves.

“Do you have any regrets?”

The usual reply is, “Yes, I do. I should have done this, or I should have done that. My answer is always, “No.”

I have made my fair share of mistakes in my life just like anyone else. Some have caused me emotional distress or a lengthy period of guilt, but that comes to all of us when we make bad decisions that are wrong for us and wrong for those who are affected. My question is what is worse — what you regret you did or the regret you still feel?

English author Matt Haig said, “It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

“It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

“But it is not our lives we should regret. That’s not the problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.”

A man will say, “I regret marrying that woman.” A woman will say, “I regret not going to college.” At the time the man decided to marry her, he thought it was the best decision. At the time, she decided to work instead of attending college; it was right for her then.

No one knows how our decisions will play out in the future. Imagine you living a life where everything you do delivers exactly the results that meet your expectations. Impossible, of course, unless you literally do nothing and you expect nothing.”

Author Nicola Yoon wrote, “You’re not living if you’re not regretting.” I agree with the first part of her comment, but not the second. To the man who regretted marrying that woman, a counselor I once knew would say, “Don’t regret it. Learn from it. Life is full of mistakes that we are bound to make, but they are mistakes we are supposed to make because we’re human. We’re imperfect. They are all supposed to teach us lessons. They are necessary to help form our character, our resilience, and our determination to improve our lives.”

Recently a report was published about the four biggest regrets people have. Number one was, “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” My counselor friend would reply that if you don’t like who you are then do something about it. Driving down the same dead-end road 100 times and expecting that drive number 101 would finally lead you to another road is an exercise in hopelessness.

Number two on the list was “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.” I met a man some time ago who worked 60 hours a week to pay for his children’s tennis lessons, his wife’s new cars, his five-bedroom house with state of the art everything. He looked and me and said, “I’ve known you for 20 minutes and I know more about you than I know about my sons who are adults now.”

Chasing money has its consequences. Author Kyle Cease wrote, “Life doesn’t care about what’s in your bank account. It wants you to grow and learn and connect and love and create and play.” An obsession to make money subtracts time from in-person love for our families, which is what they need most from us.

I knew a man who was disconnected from a relationship with his son but bought him whatever he wanted out of guilt. Their memories were hidden under the hoods of expensive vehicles dad bought for his son, cars that they never took together for a ride anywhere.

The third most common regret was, “I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.” This was difficult for me because whenever I did, I’d hear, “You shouldn’t feel that way.” I had to learn the hard way that no one controls how I feel except me. Right or wrong, how I feel is genuine to me and it should be to others.

“I wish I had let myself be happier” is the fourth regret. I’m not sure I understand this one. For me, happiness is circumstantial. It relies on cause and effect. There’s only so much anyone can try to do to make himself happy. What I can control is keeping a positive attitude when bad things happen.

My favorite person to quote about regret is Mark Twain. He wrote, “Life is short. Break the Rules. Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.”

Twain did have one regret. “I am only human, though I regret it,” he said with a laugh. Somebody else should be responsible for the mistakes we all make. He said God had the opportunity to make us more perfect, but he didn’t. He must have had a regret or two when he came to think it over after he observed the mess he created in us.

So, there you have it. The next time we feel regret about anything, let’s blame it on God. He can handle the blame better than we can.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com