you might regret reading this

You might regret reading this, but then again, you might not. Either way, there is no way you would know without reading this - so is it even fair for regret to be an option?

I really hate how people sometimes talk about regret sometimes. I get that some people say that there is no such thing as regret as you wouldn’t be where you are or be the person you are had you not made the mistakes in your past - which may be true, but I don’t want to talk about that.

What really frustrates me is when people look back past ‘mistakes’ that they could not have predicted and think they were so easily predictable. Shaming and blaming themselves, claiming that they ‘should have seen this coming’ or ‘knew this was going to happen’ (me included btw).

Sometimes this is true, we’re all guilty of often making foolish decisions that aren’t a result of careful deliberation, but a result of an impulsive, short-sighted, and unformed decision. I’m not talking about that here, maybe that’s deserving of regret idk. But there are times when we do take calculated risks, when we weigh out our options and make what we believe to be the best decision. How do we respond if and when these decisions don’t turn out in our favour?

I’m currently writing this bringing our cat from the vet. I had to make a choice, do I call myself a normal Uber for £12 or an Uber Pet for £18 - here are the possible outcomes:

1. I call myself a normal Uber, and the diver doesn’t mind the cat, I save myself £6- a win
2. I call myself a normal Uber, and the driver does mind the cat, I lose some of my money, and now have to call myself an Uber Pet, which would now mean I’m paying even more and lose time - I lose
3. I call myself an Uber Pet, pay the £18, and don’t risk being rejected by a driver and spending more money - not sure if this is a win or a loss

Having taken our cat to the vet before and it not being an issue in a normal Uber, I figured that the likelihood of a driver having a problem would be very minimal, but still a possibility.

What should I do? My focus here isn’t to optimise for a specific outcome, or to be risk averse, but rather to gain a clear understanding of my options so that I can make a well-informed decision, a decision that if it doesn’t go right for whatever reason, is not a result of shortsightedness or because it was uninformed, but because it was a calculated risk.

Now if I decide to take a risk and save money, but the driver refuses to take us, should I regret my decision?

No, I don’t think that’s not how informed risks that don’t work out work. I could easily convince myself that it was obvious that a normal Uber would reject me and that ‘I should have seen it coming’. But the honest truth is, no amount of extra calculating would have made me make a ‘better’ decision.

I guess hindsight bias makes sense as it gives a way of creating a sense of order and predictability in the world, but it’s unfair to yourself and to others. Using the knowledge you only have because of hindsight to retrospectively recalculate decisions and shame yourself is honestly unjust, especially if an outcome the outcome that could have easily worked in your favour. Maybe I should have not taken a normal Uber so I could have £6 as I needed to be home urgently - maybe that was a risk I couldn’t afford to take, and I think that that kind of hindsight reflection is understandable. But to say, retrospectively, that I shouldn’t have taken a normal Uber because it was obvious that I would have been rejected is just unfair.

Since I myself grapple with this, when things do go wrong, I try and ask myself:

“Without the help of hindsight, could it have just as easily worked out?”

If the answer is yes, there’s really nothing to take away from this and it was just a risk that didn’t work out, but if the answer is no, then that’s you dig yourself a hole and cry yourself to sleep (not really).

For anyone interested, I booked a normal Uber and the driver was fine with our cat, so there’s no regret. But maybe I would have regretted my decision had he rejected to give us a ride, I guess we’ll never know.