Learning from regret

Recently I read a quotation that encouraged us to live without regret. It implied that regretting past mistakes was unprofitable and only served to depress us and make life less enjoyable. 

I confess to harboring many regrets about my life. 

All but one of them I can and do usually sublimate in my daily life. I intellectually understand that I can't go back and correct past mistakes, but emotionally the desire to do so is ever-present. Regretting past behaviors or words can be emotionally crippling. It's important to me to examine my regrets in an attempt to learn from them and adapt my future actions based on what I learn, but not allow my regrets to damage me emotionally. I make every effort to deal with them intellectually rather than emotionally. 

This week I was reflecting on some of the events in my life I especially regret and came to a realization I'd missed before.

Most of the events in my life I regret, either the commission of or the outcome of, relate to decisions I made about the course of my life. I've made several lousy decisions about my future. Had I chosen to travel a different path my life would have taken a completely different route, and possibly a more pleasing and beneficial one. The realization I came to is that I tend to prefer little or no change to my external world when things are going well, or at least well enough, because I live more in my head than I do in the reality around me. I don't want to be bothered by adapting to changes in my external life if I can avoid them. When I do make changes in my external reality I tend to give those changes too little thought, I don't spend enough time to consider the effects of those changes on my life. I don't take my external reality seriously enough.

If I ignored my regrets I wouldn't have had this revelation, I would continue to make the same mistakes in the future. With this understanding I can give more consideration to my future. I now appreciate the need to spend more time and thought on what effects my decisions will have on my external life, and in turn have on my happiness and peace of mind. I can avoid more regrets down the road. 

No doubt we need to keep a handle on our regrets so that they don't cause us to freeze in our tracks, unable to make any decision at all lest we do something we may later regret. But it's beneficial to our self-knowledge to examine dispassionately our past actions, especially those we later came to regret. We need to learn from them in order to assure that the decisions we make in the future are more sound and thought-out. We can only avoid committing actions in the future we'll later regret if we know what we've regretted doing in the past and why we made those decisions.

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Do you know the truth?

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it. ~Terry Pratchet

First it should be noted that Terry's quote doesn't address the concept of "the truth" itself but rather says that he finds those who are striving to find "the truth" better company than those who believe they are in possession of it. In other words, it's a comment on people and their attitudes, not the nature of truth. I, too, think that people who are willing to admit they don't posses "the truth" make better companions than those who presume to already know it. They have no interest in changing their opinions since they believe that what they know is absolutely true. While this attitude affects religious people, it doesn't only affect them. There are many people with many opinions on a variety of subjects who believe that what they know is unassailable and claim that nothing will ever change their mind. I've found people who think they know "the truth" to be pompous and arrogant, uninterested in learning anything that may challenge their presumptions. They aren't fun to be around because all they're interested in is their own thoughts. They have no motivation to listen to anyone else or entertain new ideas. 


Then we need to define our terms. What is “the truth” and what is meant when it’s capitalized as “the Truth”? We need to know the context in which that phrase is being used. That will help us understand what “the truth” may represent on a certain topic. 


Lastly we ought to acknowledge the limitations of our humanity. We can only know what we have the means to discover and the words to describe. We as humans, because of the evolutionary limits of our senses, cannot perceive everything. Because of the capabilities of our brains we cannot know everything. The inability to posses absolute knowledge means we cannot reach absolute conclusions. There’s always the possibility that exceptions and contradictions to what we currently know exist and we just haven’t encountered them yet. 


That’s why the search for knowledge, the quest for “the truth” whatever that means in any context, ought to be considered an ongoing, lifelong pursuit. I like being around humble people who can admit their own ignorance and yet continue to explore and learn as opposed to those who believe they have nothing left to learn as they already posses “the truth”. 

Wisdom requires humility

A member of a debate forum I'm on has a signature on his profile that is short but profound.


"Humility is a prerequisite for wisdom because we will always be wrong about many things and therefore must be open to realizing self-error." (Yarn)


The scientist Robert Millikan expressed a similar attitude when he said, "Fullness of knowledge always means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance; and that is always conducive to humility and reverence."

If one is truly seeking wisdom they can only do so by admitting that there is much they don't know and that much of what they think they know could be wrong. 

Humble Contemplationby ~cicaprincessa

This is the point where the desire for enlightenment departs from the path of seeking religious knowledge. Seeking only that knowledge which one believes can be imparted by a god means that the knowledge one believes they receive from their god must be free of error, that it cannot be wrong. There is a smug satisfaction that accompanies the belief that one is the holder of absolute truths. 

The seeker of natural knowledge, that knowledge and wisdom generated by humans over the course of centuries of trial and error, success and failure, always remains aware that the knowledge they posses as well as that which they seek may very well be in error, and that they only seek it because of their current ignorance or incomplete knowledge. There is no absolute knowledge to be acquired and no source of absolute knowledge. The belief that one posses knowledge which is absolute and without error blinds that person to what they don't know. How can you seek to know more if you already think you know it all?

Before we begin a journey of discovery and seeking knowledge, we must practice the humility of admitting that we are unsure, unconvinced and unaware of so many things. It's foolish to take pride in the small amount of knowledge we posses when the amount of ignorance we each posses is so much greater. It's equally foolish to think that we as humans could ever be free from error. 

Knowledge and Wisdom

I contend that knowledge is remembered awareness. Wisdom is rightly applied knowledge.


We encounter information every minute of every day. Our senses are constantly feeding data to our brain. Much of it is ignored. That which we are aware of and remember becomes knowledge. 

The brain itself can interfere with this process if it is in less-than-optimum condition. Dementia, genetic disorders, alcohol and drugs can all affect the brain's ability to remember and synthesize the data is receives. 

Not all knowledge is beneficial or constructive. Some of it is downright detrimental to our happiness and peace of mind. We do have a certain degree of control over what knowledge we retain and use and what we ignore. 

Wisdom as the application of knowledge in a way that's most beneficial for ourselves and our world.


Wisdom is taking the knowledge we posses and applying it to achieve positive results. While we may not have full control over what knowledge gets put into our brain, wisdom is exercising full control over what we do with our knowledge. 


This is why we respect a knowledgeable person to a lesser degree than we respect a wise person. 


A person full of knowledge is a repository of information. That information may be useful or useless. We all know someone who delights in retaining thousands of bits of trivia; the only thing they usually do with it is entertain others or win bar bets. They have a lot of knowledge but fail to apply it in a way that is of benefit beyond becoming popular at parties or getting free drinks. 


The wise person takes the knowledge they have, however great or small the amount, and uses it to improve their own lives or the lives of others. A wise person can change the world.


Knowledge is the banishment of ignorance, wisdom is the application of knowledge.