Meanwhile, 10 percent believed they exercised free will while rejecting the idea that events unfold for a purpose. Call this group the individualists. Another 10 percent held the reverse view. Free will was a myth and everything happened for a reason, they said. These are the fatalists.
But the largest group by far—three out of four Americans in the survey—maintained both that they have free will and that most things happen for a reason, two beliefs that seem to contradict each other.
What to call this mystifying group?
I thought about it awhile. And after careful consideration, the name I’ve chosen to assign them is . . . the humans.
Open the hood of regret, and you’ll see that the engine powering it is storytelling. Our very ability to experience regret depends on our imagination’s capacity to travel backward in time, rewrite events, and fashion a happier ending than in the original draft. Our capacity to respond to regret, to mobilize it for good, depends on our narrative skills—disclosing the tale, analyzing its components, and crafting and recrafting the next chapter.
Regret depends on storytelling. And that raises a question: In these stories, are we the creator or the character, the playwright or the performer?
As the survey respondents told me—with their seemingly contradictory, bafflingly human responses to my perfectly logical questions—we are both. If our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, regret reminds us that we have a dual role. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.
Dan McAdams is a Northwestern University psychologist who has long argued that people forge their identities through stories. According to his research, two prototypical narratives wrestle for primacy as we make sense of our existence. One is what he calls “contamination sequences”—in which events go from good to bad. The other he calls “redemption sequences”—in which events go from bad to good.[1]
McAdams has found that people whose identities involve contamination narratives tend to be unhappy with their personal lives and unimpressive in their professional contributions. But people with narratives rooted in redemption are the opposite. They are generally more satisfied and accomplished—and they rate their lives as meaningful.
Regret offers us the ultimate redemption narrative. It is as powerful and affirming as any positive emotion. But it arrives on our doorstep wearing a disguise.
Just ask Cheryl Johnson.
The regret she harbored about losing touch with her close friend Jen continued to nag at her—so much so that one morning in May 2021, she pushed past her awkwardness and decided to send Jen an email.
“I suspect it might be strange to hear from me after all these years,” the message began.
Although they hadn’t communicated in twenty-five years, Jen replied within hours. The two old friends then decided to meet for a virtual lunch to reconnect.
“I finally got to say to her that I knew I made a mistake,” Cheryl told me after that lunch, “and how much I regretted losing so many years that could have been spent watching our lives unfold together.”
Jen’s response?
“But we still have a lot of years left.”
If we think about regret like this—looking backward to move forward, seizing what we can control and putting aside what we cannot, crafting our own redemption stories—it can be liberating.
It has been for me.
One of my deeper regrets is that I wasn’t kinder to people when I was younger. I’m not sure that happened for a reason, but I am sure I can find reason in the recollection. Now I try （not always successfully） to make kindness a higher priority.
I also regret moments of dishonesty, which were not cataclysmic yet somehow remain seared in my memory. Now I try to avoid placing new items on those mental shelves by working harder to do the right thing.
I regret certain educational and professional choices that I made. But now I kick myself less for these blunders and use the lessons I learned to guide the rest of my life and to inform the advice I offer others.
I regret not forging enough close connections with friends, mentors, and colleagues. Now I try harder to reach out.
I regret not taking enough entrepreneurial and creative risks, not being as bold as my privilege allows and my heart desires. Now . . . stay tuned.
After a few years immersed in the science and experience of our most misunderstood emotion, I’ve discovered about myself what I’ve discovered about others. Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.