Regret, forward and back
I get to work with people at the beginning, middle and end of their adult working lives. The first group fears regret. The latter two experience it. I’m not sure who has it worse.
Every post from a presumed human seeking advice or hacks or whatevermaxxing is trying to optimize their decisions toward some imagined ideal future. Younger folks I talk to aren’t hearing that course corrections and non-linear, inefficient paths are natural and even desirable. Their energy and stress come from the same place: assuming that there is an ideal path, that they can control how they navigate it if they make the right choices, and that they'd better fucking hurry. There’s a nervousness, a twitchiness, and a sense that eyes are upon them.
Middle aged and older folks have lived enough to abandon those illusions. They’ve collected a menagerie of regrets, but they’ve seen bad decisions have good outcomes and the reverse. Cue Picard quote that you can make no mistakes and still lose. But the tangible, irreversible life decisions that are firmly behind them—having kids or not, staying in or leaving relationships, career choices. Where they know they’re past the point of course correction. That knowledge—almost regardless of the individual details or situations—is their energy and stress. It manifests in melancholy, saudade, focus and absorption as self-distraction, the resigned smile. And finally figuring out that no one was ever watching.