"Renowned Iranian poet Ahmad Shamloo says that pain is fundamental to human existence - not merely an incidental experience, but its very starting point. Pain is the price of consciousness, freedom, and choice itself. Reflecting on this insight, I recognized a profound yet rarely acknowledged truth: every choice we make inherently involves regret, so there are no completely pain-free paths in life."
"Even when we make conscious, ethical, well-considered decisions, regret inevitably finds its way in - not due to failure, but because choosing inherently involves loss: every path taken leaves behind untaken lives, and these untaken lives remain with us, haunting us not because we erred, but because we had to choose. So regret is not a glitch in human psychology; it's the shadow cast by our agency."
Pain forms a foundational aspect of human experience, tied to consciousness, freedom, and choice. Every decision closes off alternative lives, producing regret as a natural accompaniment to agency. Greater freedom and more options can intensify regret by making untaken paths more salient. Regret can arise even after thoughtful, ethical choices because values and circumstances change over time. Regret operates as the shadow of agency rather than a psychological malfunction. Over time, missed opportunities often haunt more than wrong actions, though both actions and inactions carry emotional consequences.
Read at Philosophynow
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