Regret is a funny thing. As I edge closer to my mid-twenties, I notice the term ‘regret’ being thrown around a lot. I overhear conversations that include pointed statements like “he’ll regret doing that” and “she’ll regret leaving him”, and when I tell people about my own dreams to turn my life upside down and quit my cushy, well-paid job to travel the world, I’m met with a similar sentiment.
This is only one layer of my multifaceted experience with regret. Most recently, I ended a long-term relationship with someone who was offering me everything a conventional person could want out of a relationship – stability, companionship and the opportunity to start a family. Yet I ended up walking away because of regret.
So, what is regret? From what I’ve heard, it seems to be strongly associated with something that didn’t happen. People tell me that they have regrets about not pursuing a certain career, a certain someone or a certain way of life. My loved ones tell me that I might regret leaving my ex-boyfriend because he would make “the perfect husband”, or quitting my stable job because “opportunities like this don’t come around often”, and that shit scares the crap out of me.
Back in 2017, I was travelling around Norway with four strangers I had befriended through a student exchange program weeks prior. Travel is a funny thing, because you can connect with a stranger on such a deep level as quickly as you can say goodbye, and it’s like you never knew them.
After hours of driving on roads that snaked through picturesque fjords with dramatic cliffs that plunge into glistening blue water, we arrived atop a mountain overlooking the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen.
As I and my four newfound friends gazed upon the dramatic vista, a man ran off the cliff. Stunned, we walked to the edge, bracing ourselves for a potentially horrific scene. Instead, he soared back up to eye-level, gliding down into the valley with a parachute. Another quickly followed, and another after that.
Before long, there were five parachuters dotting the landscape and soaring into the unknown. I asked one what they were doing, and he told us they were paragliding. He also said that they would be willing to take us tandem paragliding for a fee. I and another girl in our group toyed with the idea, but ended up chickening out because the idea of willfully running off the edge of a cliff seemed rather terrifying at the time. Before the parachuter could return from his trip down the mountain, we bashfully climbed back into our rented Hyundai i30 and continued down the road.
I don’t have many regrets in my life. I don’t regret leaving my ex-boyfriend in pursuit of more. I don’t regret quitting past jobs, and I don’t regret leaping out of my comfort zone to embrace new opportunities, but I do regret the things I didn’t do and the shots I didn’t take. I regret staying in a relationship that no longer served me because I was afraid of the unknown. I regret not reaching out to an old friend to patch things up, and I regret not jumping off that damn cliff in Norway. It’s been five years since that moment and I think about that missed opportunity almost every day.
I’m 24 now and if I can take anything away from those years, it’s that firstly, jumping off a cliff sounds terrifying, but what sounds more terrifying is a life lived with wasted opportunity; and secondly, just go and do it. Whether it absolutely terrifies you to your core or makes you squeal with excitement, just do it. You won’t regret it. You probably will regret not doing it, though.
I have many more years ahead of me and many more lessons to learn, but for now, it’s time for me to put on my big-girl pants so I can go back to Norway and jump off that cliff before travelling the world and chasing my dreams.