what are you waiting for?
on regret, Leo Tolstoy, and getting a beer
Today is February 8th.
No, actually, it’s February 13th. Ironically, as you’ll see, I’ve had a hard time finishing starting this piece again.
Lots of reasons excuses for this:
Had nearly 15 hours of lessons this week, which all require prep and follow-ups. Most of the lessons are just talking for an hour straight which is tiring in a way I don’t expect.
Had to build two shelves and a table which took way longer than expected because the instructions were seemingly written by a six-year-old child whose only experience in construction is Lunchables stacks and plastic blocks.
Haven’t interacted face-to-face with another human in a meaningful way in nearly a week. This makes me feel numb and weird and counter-intuitively really removes me from myself.
Haven’t been sleeping all that well and thus feeling more drained at the end of the day. Feeling like I need to “relax” at night. Good Relaxing is knitting or reading, but I finished my slippers and am reading a bad book, so instead I do Bad Relaxing, which is scrolling.
Philip asks me on the phone if I feel “burdened” more than usual, probably because I am having a manic breakdown about shelves and have been in bed before 10pm four out of five days this week. I say yes, I’m feeling burdened, and after wallowing for a little longer, I resolve to get out my funk.
Unfortunately this means confronting the reasons why I am in a funk. I check my screen time. Nearly five hours on Instagram this week. I’m supposed to have Instagram deleted.
I delete Instagram. I text friends and ask if anyone wants to get a beer even though part of me just wants to go to bed early again, not commute 40 minutes in the cold. But this is the kind of funk that requires a little bit of work to get out of.
I go to a coffee shop and resolve to start again.
A few days ago (now many days ago, see, it was February 8th when I wrote this part) I decided to stop checking my phone first thing in the morning. A resolution, except I didn’t make it on January 1st. In fact I spent more days in January scrolling on my phone before bed than not scrolling. But falling asleep to YouTube shorts and waking up to emails and texts and DMs about jello was doing bad things to my brain.
I had been thinking about this resolution for a while. In an email my friends I noted that I wanted to “transition back” to having my phone on the other side of the room at night, which I’ve done a few times before.
Transition, except is no “transition” needed for this. I either sleep with my phone plugged in away from my bed or I don’t. “Transition” is a crutch. Because I was waiting. I was waiting because a random Tuesday didn’t feel like the right time to make this call. I wanted a good-feeling day. I wanted a first of the month or an end of the week. I wanted a sign from God. But I didn’t get any of those.
So I plugged my phone in and shoved it under my bed and didn’t go on it before I slept. I made myself get out of bed in the morning, brush my teeth, drink a glass of water, and make my coffee before checking it.
And I felt better.
Here is a list of reasons I have waited to do something:
Too old
Not old enough
Not the right time
Too cold
Too tired
Not the right place
Don’t want to regret it
Wanted to do something else
Afraid
Need more time to think
Overthinking
In my fourth year of college I took a seminar called “Character Traits and Success.” It was invitation-only for undergraduates because it was technically a class in the graduate school for business, so most of my classmates were much older. (I remember one was married with a kid on the way, which at the time was mind-blowing to me).
“Class” was sort of a stretch — every week we’d read an essay or lecture about leaders, virtues, morals, success, etc. Then we’d get together and eat pizza and discuss said readings. Then we’d drink wine and chat in a more informal setting.
(I had a weird phobia of accidentally getting drunk around adults at this point in time and also took the class on Monday nights, so I literally never drank any wine but I did steal copious cups of coffee from the lounge below the classroom).
It was a really lovely semester, my first and last without the near constant work on The Cavalier Daily. I liked the class. For the most part our discussions were thought-provoking if occasionally contrived. We read Plato, Nicomachean Ethics, part of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, and David Foster Wallace. We talked about discipline, about money, about ambition.
At the very end of the class we read Regrets of the Dying, a collection of observations about regret from a palliative care nurse. The idea is that regret can teach you lessons. People regretted not expressing their feelings, working too hard, staying stuck in old habits. Most people regret chances they didn't take as opposed to mistakes they made.
The idea, the takeaway, is that you’re supposed to take risks. You’re supposed to live honestly, with intention, and not hold back because you’re afraid. Otherwise, you might regret it.
A couple days after I start writing this I am listening to Ezra Klein’s interview with George Saunders, who’s just come out with a novel called Vigil. I haven’t read it yet but I love George Saunders and I loved Lincoln in the Bardo.
I literally almost stop walking because in the first few seconds of the podcast Ezra plays a clip of George speaking at a university and he says:
“What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was right there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded sensibly, reservedly, mildly.”
There’s a psychological term for it, because of course there is, when you experience little coincidences in the universe that feel as though they must be related, must be magic, but are probably just, well, probability.
But still. I was just thinking about regret – I was writing about this very thing, regretting not doing something, and here is George Saunders in my ear, as if he’s logged into my Substack and reading my drafts. (George, if you’re here, would love to grab a coffee and chat. You seem great).
So of course it felt meaningful, especially because Vigil, I gather from the podcast, is about regret. Ezra and George cover a lot more ground — about truth, evil, about God and judgement, about comfort and grace. It’s a great episode and I think everyone should listen to it. But I was struck by one section where George talk about one of the inspirations for Vigil, which is The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy.
Tolstoy has layered in this idea that Ivan is starting to realize that he wasted his life by this idea of being normal. There’s a beautiful moment, where after many, many days of saying: Why am I suffering so much when I lived the perfect life? when he finally says to God: All right, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I lived out of alignment with truth.
And at that point, he begins this rapid transformation. Salvation in that moment is to align yourself with what is actually true. The truth is you lived your life in the wrong way.
At some point he says: All right, I can’t go back in time, but I can start now, essentially. I can start being in alignment. I didn’t live in the right way.
You can feel the pain start to go out of him.
I am afraid, deeply so, of living my life wrong. Of wasting it. I fear I will one day regret key moments of decision in my life. I don’t want to be on my deathbed realizing I’ve done it all wrong. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
So what are we supposed to do?
I don’t know. Obviously. How can you answer that question, really? God only knows (literally, depending on what you believe). But I think, I think, there are some things you can do. To live fully, to live without regret.
1. You can live in “alignment with truth,” whatever that means to you.
I majored in Creative Writing because that felt like the truest thing I wanted to do in college.
It hasn’t necessarily been the most helpful degree in terms of figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life (‘published novelist’ is actually quite a challenging career to pursue) and I sometimes wish I had majored in something more utilitarian.
But nothing has felt truer to me than the feeling I get reading a piece of fiction that changes my life. There is no regret. I think of when Jesse Ball gave us all a thick piece of paper in increasingly smaller type as his syllabus, crying on the Lawn a month later after reading The Unfortunates. Meeting with Anna, who to this day is one of the best educators I’ve ever met, so kind and generous with her time and wisdom.
Holding an entire 60 pages that I wrote, wearing a pink dress and a hand-made crown of laurels while I read some of those pages, my hands shaking. Getting to spend two years with classmates whose work I still read (shoutout to Julia Hyde and her lovely drivel!).
How can I regret something as true as all that?
2. You can choose to reframe regret as gratitude.
I do think regret can be a useful tool — reading about what other people regret can help orient you towards truth. But that doesn’t mean you won’t ever make the wrong decision. It doesn’t mean that you won’t look back on certain parts of your life and wonder if you should’ve done something different.
These are the moments that are ripe with the potential for regret. They are also moments that teach you a lot about life and about yourself.
After college I moved to Spain, as many of you probably know. This blog was born in Spain, out of that decision. (Happy 504 days of internet diary, by the way!)
There were so many things about Spain I loved. I loved living in the little apartment on Calle Cuna with Jonah and Philip. I loved playing Bananagrams and going to Five Guys with the friends we made in Spain. (One of those friends just moved three doors down from me!) I loved going to Aldi four times a week.
But then there are some days I look back at that decision and wonder if it was wrong. Despite the things I loved, living abroad was hard for me. I didn’t like my job. I had health issues I couldn’t resolve. I cried a lot and was not always kind or a good friend. Coming back to the U.S., I felt (and still feel) adrift compared to some of my peers who jumped into full-time jobs out of college.
And then I think about how much I learned.
I learned that being close to family and friends is really important to me. I learned that I don’t want to teach English. I learned how to deal with really hard moments and how not to deal with them. I learned that most things don’t change unless you do something about them, that you can’t wish for life to get better. You have to do that sh*t yourself!
I also learned how to apply for a visa, how to stand up for myself against weird landlords, how to cook liver, how to order tiny beers in Spanish, how to kiss people on both cheeks and not make it awkward.
How can I regret learning so much?
3. And finally, you can stop waiting. You can choose to do it now, and hope you mostly regret the chances you didn’t take.
George (Saunders, in case you forgot) says it best:
All right, I can’t go back in time, but I can start now, essentially.
You can just do it, now, just make a new decision that feels truer or feels better. Because then at least you won’t regret the chance you didn’t take, right?
That can be something small with an infinitesimal chance for regret, like sleeping with your phone on the other side of the room.
Or it can be something bigger. Telling someone you love them, even if you’re not sure if they feel the same, not waiting for some sign. Just writing that application and submitting it, not waiting for the right time.
I was really scared of moving to New York. But I decided I was more scared of not doing it. I was afraid that I’d spend another month at home in Short Pump and really not taking that job when I had the chance.
So I stopped waiting and I said yes and now I’m here, and how can I regret being brave? How can I regret saying yes and at least finding out?
You can’t go back in time. You can’t change the past. But you can change the right now. You’re never stuck, not really. Even if you realize you really have made the wrong choice, you can make another, different one. You can make mistakes and even more mistakes, but I really do think mistakes are better than wondering what if.
So what are you waiting for?
Reading this right now felt a little serendipitous and magical as I am also in a place of winter funk 🧍🏼♀️ Creating the life you want can be scary, difficult, and it will never be how you imagine it, but it’s ultimately so rewarding!!
Really really loved reading this Ava🫂 Something about the end of college has made me think a lot about regret and I really appreciate how you framed what we can learn from not doing something. We have to just try because that’s alwaysssss better than inaction !!