Regret
Dear Doctor,
Our oldest son is home, looking for a job, and is generally miserable. His problem is that he quit high school. He hated school, and we supported his decision.
He did go ahead and get his GED. He says now that he should not have quit school and blames us for not making him go on. We tried everything to convince him at the time, but he would not listen.
We wondered what you thought about this kind of thing.
Regretful Parents
Dear Regretful,
What a waste of time!
Regretting is the most non productive, energy consuming, regressive sort of enterprise. It gets you nowhere, accomplishes nothing, and makes you miserable, especially since you cannot undo what you regret.
Interestingly, psychologists have studied regret, the "what might have beens." I read a summary of research recently. Happy people often have things they regret. The difference is their approach to the past. They see life as going forward. They understand being happy must include tolerance for complexity. There are other psychologists who are studying resiliency, the phenomenon of gaining strength and "rolling with the punches."
Philosophically, life is a series of wrong turns which often send us in the right direction. Whether your son would have enjoyed high school is debatable. What does he think would have changed? If he "hated" it then, he would likely not be too enthralled now.
Learning to tolerate the complex and difficult is a hallmark of maturity. I shall not quote the phrase, sometimes seen on bumper stickers, which, translated, means "trouble occurs." It is the truth. Furthermore, uninterrupted success brings boring attributes forward, stifles empathy, and does not allow for learning.
Have your son read this column. Wish him the best. Tell him "tough" and get going!
Tags: attributes, bumper stickers, complexity, dear doctor, differences, empathy, ged, hallmark, maturity, parents, phenomenon, phrase, productive energy, psychologist, psychologists, quot, resiliency, right direction, rolling with the punches, tolerance, uninterrupted success, waste of time
One Comment to “ Regret ”