Reframing regret.
The relief of removing regret from our worldview.
“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, and you become a baby, until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, with larger quarters every day and then voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”
―Woody Allen
In our penultimate letter, we explored the idea that since apparent problems cannot be solved from the same mode of thinking which created them, and since our mode of thinking is structured in our consciousness state, the ultimate solution to any so-called problem is to expand our consciousness—because we can’t see the solution to a problem until after we’re in the new consciousness state.
Once we reach that new state, it all seems so clear and obvious—hindsight is 20/20.
The trouble begins when we start the wishful thinking that we could apply these new lessons retroactively—otherwise known as regret.
HumanOS
We can think of our consciousness state like our operating system. It has a limited set of capabilities and programs it can run.
Of course, life would have been much easier if we had access to iOS 19 in 2003—but Apple engineers had to first tinker with iOS 2 and continue iterating on that year after year, building upon lessons learned from previous years in order to arrive at iOS 19 (which still, by the way, has lots of room for improvement—just like us.)
The Irrelevance of Regret
With more expanded awareness and clarity of perception, we may find ourselves regretting decisions or behavior made in our old state.
Regret is an entirely futile endeavor at best, and an especially cruel form of self-flagellation at worst.
We needed to engage in that ‘regrettable’ behavior in order to learn from it.
This is why we can say that there are no ‘mistakes’, only lessons learned.
It’s a useless form of self-torture then, to look back on situations on our lives and wish we had handled them differently.
A Reassuring Reminder
The truth is, each of us is only capable of behaving in accordance with the consciousness state we’re in at any given moment.
We do the best we can with what we know at the time. And what we know at any given time is structured in our state of consciousness, or operating system.
Through each experience, we expand our awareness and learn more.
As we learn more, we see in hindsight how we could have done things differently.
…But we can’t apply this new perspective retroactively and say “I wish I knew this then” because it was that very experience which taught us what we now know.
There was no possible way we could have done it any differently.
Even if we truly knew better, but didn’t act on that knowledge, that, in and of itself, was a lesson we needed to learn.
More Research Needed
I’ve been visiting with a close friend in New York who woke up one morning having dislocated his shoulder in his sleep.
He told me this same shoulder has been popping out of its socket off and on for 15 years and expressed regret at not having done something about it sooner, even though he knew he should have.
Clearly, he had still needed to do more ‘research’ in ignoring the issue until it caused so much complication in his life that it became too loud to ignore, prompting an expansion in awareness and leading him to finally get it taken care of.
Lesson learned.
But to regret not having done it sooner would be to punish himself pointlessly.
Moving Forward
Once our research subjects us to enough irrelevance and we finally grasp the lesson life has been trying to teach us, it’s our responsibility to acknowledge and integrate it moving forward, lest we continue to willfully create more karma for ourselves through ignorance.
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”
—Søren Kierkegaard
Instead of regretting past actions, we re-interpret past challenges as learning experiences, remain grateful for them, and behave in more relevant ways moving forward instead of looking back and lamenting. Known as re-enlivening the past, this exercise is explored in more detail in the Exploring the Veda course series and forms the cornerstone of most forms of talk therapy if you think about it.
The more of our awareness lingers on the past, the less of it is available to integrate those lessons moving forward.
None of the engineers at Apple HQ are losing sleep over regret from not being able to introduce these latest features in 2003—their awareness is established in the present, applying these lessons to make iOS 20 the best it can possibly be in 2026.
Let’s discuss these and other ideas during Collective Effervescence, our online group meditation series, this Sunday April 20 at 12PM ET. Drop in for meditation only (first 30 min) or stay for discussion + Q&A on this and other life topics from the Vedic perspective. Join the WhatsApp group to receive reminders 24 hours before each session, or use the below links to have all upcoming dates automatically sync to your calendar.
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I exhort you to take 5 minutes and 5 seconds from today’s allotment of algorithmic doomscrolling, sit in your simplest form of awareness, and listen to this. It’s free on YouTube with no ads. It is not only thematically perfect but will put your priorities in perspective and a smile on your face. And I spent an (un)regrettable amount of time finding the best version of it for you.