Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#261

Post by pc86 » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:22 PM UTC

I'm torn on this. My life is pretty great. Well paid, leaving a job I hate for a job I think I will love in the next few weeks, loving family. Things would be drastically different if not for the path I actually took, but still.

I'm a developer, and a decent one - not FAANG level by any means, but decent. But, my degree is from a school nobody's ever heard of, in an unrelated humanities subject, with a horrendous, barely-graduated level GPA. I was much more concerned with partying and video games. If I had it to do over again, I would have majored in CS, studied, and actually applied myself.

So I'm torn. If I had had my eye on CS, I might have gone to a school like CMU or similar, would have been excited by the material as opposed to the classes I slogged through, and maybe ended up in SF or NYC in the 2008-2010 timeframe. That was a super exciting time in the startup space. Who knows where I'd be now, but it certainly wouldn't be where I actually am, and I really like where I actually am.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#262

Post by oldsklgdfth » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

I've got a whiteboard on my wall with phrases I want to internalize and maybe turn into mantras. One of them is:

"Guilt and regret kill many a man before their time."

I regret many things in life. If I could go back I would do things very differently. I would be kinder. More hard working. Humble. Have integrity. Uplift the people around me. Explore the world.

It's very depressing when I look at my life that way. So I just look at today. How do I make the most of today. If I get hit by a bus will I be satisfied with what I did.

Remember half of life is chance.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#263

Post by q7xvh97o2pDhNrh » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #107

Focused too much on making a living in my teens and 20s instead of college and social life. Never pursued artistic interests seriously because I was just too tired from working and stressing out about bills. Now I’m in my 30s with next to no social life and the realization that I’ve wasted away my time and whatever little talent I have. There’s a “regret” folder sitting in my Google Drive with two half-finished books…

What would happen if you renamed that folder from "regret" to "work in progress"?

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#264

Post by j_k_eter » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

Denying the existence of God (or a higher organizing intelligent power, if you like) until I was 45.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#265

Post by smoldesu » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #95

user_7832 wrote: post #66

To anyone full of regret, I'd just like to give a quote by Marcus Aurelius (a Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher) Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what's left and live it properly. Life likely hasn't been perfect for almost anyone, but would you rather die right now (with likely unfinished desires, wishes and more regrets) or would you try to make the best use of what you have? (It may b…

Steve Jobs turned the ideas in that quote into a commencement speech after his cancer diagnosis. It concludes with: Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is tru…

It's a shame he never took the advice to heart. Jobs' last days were unnecessarily painful for both himself and his family, who desperately tried helping him only to be pushed away and insulted.

Jobs was good at echoing the wisdom of people smarter than him, but not so great at using those principles to fix his own life.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#266

Post by CSMastermind » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:29 PM UTC

I dated a girl in college, and we were deeply in love. So much so that we got engaged. The one problem was that her family didn't approve of her dating me because of my race. She had initially been hesitant to introduce me to them, but I had insisted that she do it. When they threatened to disown her if she married me, she said that we should just do it and live our lives together. But I was too much of a coward to follow through and tried instead to convince her family to accept me. They never did and our relationship feel apart.

I've never met someone that I care about the way I cared about her. Huge what if.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#267

Post by par » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

DontchaKnowit wrote: post #179

Always had an obsessive personality. Raised Christian. Always had a bent for pushing boundaries. Got interested in the nuerochemistry of psychoactive substances. Got very involved in educating myself about drug usage, until I was finally comfortable trying them. Queue ~6 years of polysubstance abuse, wasted money, and fake ass friends. Did everything under the sun I could get my hands on. I think the list of unique d…

Promise you that it is never too late. Speaking from experience. You've accomplished more than you realize. Stay straightened out and get out there.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#268

Post by tsuujin » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

THENATHE wrote: post #12

I wish I had asked my dad more things and recorded/wrote them down . My old man is in for stage 4 cancer and it gets harder to ask him things. Every little tidbit of info he gave me over the years I cherish greatly, but I often times (read: nearly always) forget the context or nuance of the statement, meaning that, of the thousands of moments I’ve had with him, only a select few are ones that provide me any insight i…

I feel for you.

My dad died earlier this year from prostate cancer. I wish deeply that I had spent more time with him, listened more closely to him. I lay awake every night thinking about lost opportunities I had during my life, moments when I chose to do anything other than just hang out with him.

You have a hard road ahead, I hope you have a support network filled with people who love you. I am a loner with no support network outside of my family and it has been fucking hard.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#269

Post by carapace » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

Generally I believe it's important to learn from your mistakes, which are inevitable. If you're learning and trying to do better, then regret should fade with time.

I think the biggest mistake that I've made (that others might be helped to avoid by hearing about) was not to save money. I've had a lot of money flow through my hands over the course of my career as a programmer, yet I have very little to show for it, and I'm not getting any younger.

Other than that, I mostly regret the times I've hurt people or not helped them but could have.

Re: Ask HN: What's Your Biggest Regret?

#270

Post by timwaagh » Fri, Oct 07, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

I would have prevented by parents from using psychoactive medicine on me. Even though I was very young and it could not be said to be a reasonable thing to deny your parents anything at that age I still should have been stronger. I later learned that it has implications for your development so might have changed who I am. And not for the better.

As a close second: telling girls I was interested was something I could not do for a long long time. It's still difficult and I know it's very common for men to have these sort of regrets but I managed to overcome at least some of that.

I could have studied harder too but it was very difficult for me.