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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

I find the notion that a life without regret is a list of x things to be ticked off over the course of a lifetime quite simplistic. I don't have a better answer. But it is definitely not a list, at least not for me.

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Here's my take -- the list is incidental. It could have been anything. The key here is that he engaged with his dreams in a real way. He thought about them, made them concrete, and then tried to actualize them. He gave his life a goal and a self-directed "meaning."

Imagine if he tried to do the things on his list, but failed. Would he be less happy? Probably not.

Of course, this is all assuming that he is truly the "completely satisfied" person that the article paints him to be. I doubt any person is quite so simple as that.

You’re probably right. A list is at least a very conscious way of living. Probably more conscious than most

I think it's actually even simpler. If you se a set a function of value you in your life and you build a feedback loop to track how much of that value you are achieving, you're probably gonna have a good time.

Especially a list you write when you're 15 years old. It probably morphed a bit throughout his lifetime as he gained more knowledge. I can't imagine my 39 year old self wanting to complete every task my 15 year old self put on a bucket list.

My 15 year old self wanted to open for Korn and ski in the winter X Games. To date I have no regrets that either of these haven’t happened yet.

Good point. I don’t see myself desecrating a historical monument (climbing the Pyramid of Keops) just to tick off a bucket list point, but I admit it does look ‘cool’ to a 15 year old.

What about regretting your behaviour or how you treated someone

Most of my regrets come from this.

Don’t regret opportunities to grow. Only regret if you don’t grow from them.

This is a subtle, but underappreciated sentiment. Hindsight is 20/20. Beating yourself up when things don't go your way is a destructive form of regret. Learning from your decisions to get better at forward prediction is more constructive.

I have situations in life where i treated someone badly and there is no way to make up for it. I definitely regret these.

I think what you are talking about is where you did something and it didn’t work out for yourself.

Even in those cases, you can learn empathy and perspective. Introspection, understanding what you were feeling and why you acted/reacted the way you did is opportunity for growth. A lot of times, you can trace it back to a root insecurity, jealousy, or fear.

Totally agree. But the regret stays. I think it should stay because it’s too easy to just brush it off and say “let’s move on”.

The alternative seems quite self-obsessed, too. When people who have hurt others, and then reformed, say that they have no regrets because everything that happened made them the person they are today, that is a big red flag to me (unless 'the person they are today' really has done some amazingly altruistic things to make amends). It comes across almost solipsistic, like the only thing that matters is their own character and their own story.

edit: and of course, 'people who have hurt others' encompasses all of us, to greater or lesser degrees. I'm not saying that none of us should be happy with who we are, or that we should never admit that we think things turned out for the best, weighing the good against the bad. But surely most of us have some things we really would do differently if we had our time again.

I think it is healthy to feel regret at having caused hurt, even if you consider it collateral damage related to your own personal growth.

I regret a thing, because it impacted someone else. Evaluating it as solely as my personal growth opportunity strikes me as royally selfish. Whatever I learned from that does not undo said impact.

I don't think the article claims a life without regret = a bucket list. In fact it doesn't even use the word "regret" outside the title

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