Most regret doesn’t come from making the wrong decision. It comes from simply making a decision.
Soren Kierkegaard famously wrote, “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it.” He kept going—“do this or that, either way you’ll regret it”.
That insight feels relevant today because modern life is engineered to keep every alternative visible. Like getting “outordered” at a restaurant. You order the fish and regret it when the other entrees you didn’t choose hit the table. Suddenly your evening is ruined by three short ribs sitting on a plate of mashed potatoes.
At any moment, you can open Instagram and seeing your high school prom date traveling to Europe, running marathons, celebrating anniversaries, retiring early, or somehow doing all of those things at once. How absurd. Life becomes an endless digital comparison trap.
That comparison trap trains us to compare reality against fantasy all day long. Reality loses every time, because no life feels extraordinary from the inside….all the time. Every meaningful life eventually becomes ordinary, because ordinary life is where human beings actually live. I suspect that even the Pope occasionally gets bored with his ordinary life.
Much of modern dissatisfaction comes from a refusal to accept this basic truth. People keep searching for the choice that eliminates regret altogether—the perfect partner, the perfect city, the perfect career, the perfect tattoo. Perfect is the enemy of good.
Every meaningful decision costs something. The goal isn’t to find a life with zero tradeoffs. The goal is to choose tradeoffs you can live with. You do not get to avoid sacrifice. You only get to decide which sacrifices are worth making. Like going with the butterfly tattoo instead of the dragon .
“Most regret doesn’t come from making the wrong decision. It comes from simply making a decision”.
Wisdom has less to do with making flawless decisions and more to do with learning how to stop idealizing the alternatives. Because perfect choices are a fantasy.
You have to notice when your imagination is distorting reality. You have to catch yourself when you start worshipping the road not taken. You have to ask better questions—not “Did I choose perfectly?” but “Am I comparing reality to fantasy?” Not “How do I avoid regret?” but “What kind of life is worth the cost?”
Kierkegaard understood that regret is not a sign of failure. Sometimes it’s simply proof that your decision mattered. Proof that you are alive enough to feel the weight of both what was gained and what was lost.
Peace doesn’t come from finding a regret-free life. Maybe peace comes from accepting that every intentional life contains both a sense of gratitude and a sense of loss. You can deeply love what you chose while still feeling the occasional ache of what you left behind. It’s human.
“Every meaningful life eventually becomes ordinary, because ordinary life is where human beings actually live”.
Psychologists have found that people are often less satisfied with decisions that can be reversed. Because reversibility keeps alternative realities alive in the mind. You buy a new piece of clothing that is returnable within 30 days. For 29 days you think about taking it back to exchange it for something else.
That tension is not a flaw in the system. It’s just human beings—being human. And here is the strange truth: the road not taken is often an imaginary one.
“Regret is not a sign of failure. Sometimes it’s simply proof that your decision mattered”.
The road taken must bear the full weight the compromises, disappointments, sacrifices, and responsibilities that come with being alive. The unintentional life bears none of that weight. It remains idealized because it a fantasy.
But once a decision feels final, something surprising happens. The noise begins to quiet. Instead of obsessing over alternatives, we begin to commit to the life directly in front of us.
Maybe maturity is learning to stop giving energy to the life you didn’t choose. Maybe it is learning to love the life you have. So that you stop wondering whether another path would have made you happier.
You didn’t make the wrong decision. Your regret comes from simply making a decision.
Ever made any decisions you regret? I wanna hear about it. I promise you’ll hear back from me.
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