No Regrets

I am told that most adults look back on life with a bucket of regrets.

They think about how life might be different today if childhood circumstances, teenage influences, education options, love and marriage, and work choices had been altered to something more favorable to their deep desires and aptitudes, wishes and dreams.

Where do you sit in the circle of life? Do you still have dreams? Are you able to conjure up the initiative required to achieve them? Is there anything you can do now to release the grip of an unfortunate past?

Perhaps you depict your life as bottom of the barrel, weighted by sadness and stress, and worries over income, housing, family members and life gone bad. Self-fulfillment dreams, not just deferred but never sown. A broken car, a broken life.

In The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Viking Press, 2020), the main character, Nora, hangs between life and death after an attempted suicide. She lands in the midnight library where she can choose possible lives guided by the kindly librarian of her childhood, Ms. Elm. Throughout childhood, Nora played chess with Ms. Elm, which the story uses as a metaphor for life. At birth one faces a perfect chess board; first and subsequent moves change everything else that follows. Nora has a chance to look back on her regrets and missed opportunities and realize the value in the life she lives. It is a simple, beautiful story.

It's a perfect book to explore in small book groups made up of intimate friends, ones that provide a safe zone for sharing personal thoughts and stories. My Beaufort book group of six is small enough to meet around a table of good food and thoughtful discussion. We concluded a couple of things.

First, we are fortunate to live in an age, where we are expected, allowed, perhaps encouraged to keep evolving. We can look back on unfulfilled dreams and take steps to live them now.

Here are some things I would have changed. As a child, I would have taken dance, music and art classes, gone to summer camp, and been a Disney Mousketeer. Better yet, Harriet the Spy. I told everyone who asked that I intended to be a writer, or a dancer. In reality, the only adventure and happy endings I found came from books or television, and most of the television shows featured boys as doers and girls as lookers. I drew sketches of dream houses and imaginary cities. I danced in my bedroom when no one was looking. I climbed a mulberry tree with my friend. From our perch, we looked down on her scruffy back yard and discussed the grand future of our dreams.

As a teen I carried the weight of the world. Living in the era of Civil Rights and Vietnam protests, and in a home front with a father paralyzed from botched surgery and diminished family income, my life took on a bleak cast. In high school, a few inspirational teachers, identified my potential but there seemed no place to take it. The school principal and guidance counselor tortured me at every turn for being a free thinker, rather that supporting me to find a university or college like Smith, Radcliff, or Wellesley, with the financial aid that might have opened my world to places I did not know existed, but were a better fit for me, than those in my state. I had a cousin and boyfriend killed in car accidents. I was serious minded and depressed; having teenage fun seemed frivolous. Life was kicking me in the teeth.

Several good things happened to me during my teen years that offered encouragement, inspiration and opportunity. These all came from the kindness of strangers. I was selected to write a weekly teen column for the town newspaper. From that I met high school students from other schools who had similar yearnings to change the world. I fell in love with a poet.

The state superintendent of public education read a letter I wrote about the failures of our education system, and hired me to work for him during the summer. From that I was selected to attend a youth leadership conference and met the Dean of Guilford college who invited me to become a Guilford Fellow and offered a scholarship. He told me that experience had taught him that Guildford students who came from very challenging backgrounds were more fortunate than those with no hard knocks in life. They tended to make so much more of their lives. "At Guilford, we believe that every student has a special gift and our faculty is committed to help them find it."

As a teen, I was fortunate to be found and mentored by several kind and influential adults who showed me doors and windows through which I might live out my childhood dreams. I think of them and wonder how they could know that through the extra mile they walked for me, they pulled me from despondency. But then again, they probably did. In writing this, I realize that what they did for me, I have since done for others. Now I can see that the benefits return home.

And this brings me to the second thing that my book group concluded about lessons from The Midnight Library. In the course of life, we are often self-focused on the struggles, disappointments and tedium of daily life, when all around us there are people who could use an act of kindness.

When we tune into others, and dwell less on ourselves, we will receive gratitude that reshapes our sense of personal worth. We will also develop deeper human connections that hold the true meaning and purpose of life. From our own acts of kindness, enlightenment comes to help us see our own way forward. Our spirit and dreams are rekindled.

Let's take these thoughts about overcoming regrets to a societal level. David Brooks, in his New York Times essay, "The American Renaissance Has Begun (June 17, 2021),"explains how the Covid-19 pandemic changed us for the better. "Millions of Americans endured grievous loss and anxiety during this pandemic, but many also used this time as a preparation period, so they could burst out of the gate when things opened up."

After decades where consumption took precedent over savings, Americans used the time to pay off debts, and save money to realize long-held dreams. Large numbers of Americans took on-line classes to improve skills, explore hobbies, or start a new business. Brooks surmises that "the biggest shifts, though, may be mental. People have been reminded that life is short. For over a year, many experienced daily routines that were slower paced, more rooted, more domestic. Millions of Americans seem ready to change their lives to be more in touch with their values."

Brooks thinks that this post-Covid era of creation has changed society in at least three ways: shifts in power from employer to employee; rebalancing between urban and suburban life with a move toward more space, slower-paced lives, and more interaction with family and neighbors; and re-balancing between work and domestic life. "People are shifting their personal lives to address common problems — loneliness and loss of community."

During the Covid-19 pandemic Americans reached out to help their community. They spent a great deal of time looking back over their lives and trading regrets for action, for a better more fulfilling personal and professional life, and increased focus on reaching out to others.

The book, Midnight Library, offers opportunity to consider our own regrets and recognize value in the life we have. The David Brooks essay suggests that the good news from the Covid-19 pandemic is that the phenomenon of reflection and action has taken place at a societal level. Americans in masses are energized to create a better life, a better society.

The concluding message is this: Consider those regrets and reboot your life. You are in good company in an age of possibility.