What good are regrets?

Dennis recounted to me his life in the 1990's over lo hei last evening.

There is a tendency to look at our life in the teens, 20's and 30's in negative terms. "I should have spent more time with my family." "I wish I had taken that job." "If I had known then what I know now."

I think one reason some middle-aged men run off with their 25 year old secretaries is that they want to rewrite their stories. They cannot get past the mistakes of thier younger days, so they try to write a new one.

This is how I see it: everything in our younger days - the successes as well as the failures, the good decisions and the lousy ones - prepares us for something better.

What good are regrets? Regrets slow us down. regrets cause us to fail to pay attention to the future. So I never log, count and inventory my regrets. I move on.