Learning need not regret
How we learn, and deciding to learn
To regret not taking a further action, despite doing what you thought was the best course of action given what you knew at the time, is a harmful process of learning with several disadvantages:
- The more you know, the further little you feel about yourself compared to the world you are now more aware of as larger than previously thought.
- Further validation of your own perception of your own mediocrity, enables and justifies further inaction, laziness; reiterating a low level of self confidence by justifying its existence, makes it so that you lack the confidence needed to reach higher goals, overcome challenging environments, and self actualize into higher forms. Perceived inability becomes self prophesizing.
- Learning as an unpleasant “necessary” process. The increased cost of learning lends heuristic/proxy/untrue forms of learning more attraction, susceptible to a number of local fallacies, producing uncritical thinkers who loathe criticism.
What if instead, learning could be a process of self love, without deprecation, that was ever constructive, generative, “Yes”. That then every step outside your comfort zone is a step in a Future comfort zone, expanded, to be more? This is real and accomplishable. You’ll see, I hope.
Learning without regret
Learning without regret is possible if you’d just stop blaming yourself for inaction in the face of ignorance: the unknown unknowns. Stop blaming yourself for doing something you couldn’t have known about at the time. Time is linear, so hindsight in the past is never possible. That is, the better you that could be possible in the future is not possible to access in the now. Otherwise, we’d never be able to improve.
All there is possible is just all there is now. And if transactions from the future to the present were possible, that’d mean the future is already predetermined into things we know will happen and, perhaps also, things we don’t know will happen or not. Yet the latter only has size if the former could be less certain of itself. But since it cannot be, then it must be that all fate is preordained. Quantum physics and the general theory of relativity cannot both be true.
And so then,… Then we’d never be sure if our actions are our own, if choice, free will, agency exists. We either have free will, can choose what we do, or we do not. If we do not, what motivates “our” actions? What be “we” but stitches in the woven looms of what is already to come, so we can strip ourselves of the responsibility of our actions?
To accept that we make choices, and those choices beget consequences that were fully in our control to make possible, that is a path towards understanding Learning without Regret.
See, when we shame ourselves for things we could not have predicted, we put ourselves in a constant state of meekness that justifies the reasons why we sometimes end up making bad decisions: “of course I did that. I am that kind of person after all. Look at all the other times I fucked up; I have become a fuck up, and fuck ups are that stupid.” For a good person would “never” do such bad things! Being a bad person becomes a comfort zone: “I could not have been able to act better, because I generally lack the ability to have good foresight on the correct action.”
Learning by regret carries a form of technical debt: can’t. An accumulated mindset of Haven’t, and so Won’t in the future, ever do the right best thing.
Which means that when one has the “correct” instinct, when one really can do (one of) the best possible things in a situation, which (always) also coincides with being the best possible thing you could do/have done at the time, that instead of pursuing that CHOICE, you are more doubtful. You are less confident, despite coming to good conclusions. And so, you don’t do it. Or you hesitate doing it, which also creates consequences of inconfidence in the face of the right direction.
While such people in this state will live fine, in the spaces of their own comfort zones and societal pressure induced regret, they are less likely to take risks. In fact, their risk aversion will be a level that is higher than should be realistic, given their existing distorted perception of their own ability.
Learning through inclusion
What if instead, you could learn by not regretting it, through a love of the self? A love for self improvement, that nurtures when you recognize you didn’t know [something you are learning now]? Because Holy Shit, you’re learning, and that means you can do more, you can be even better in the future! That 3rd grade you is a better person than 2nd grade you; and goddamnit, progress progresses you.
Do not fear what you do not know, what could make you bigger, better. Because size is relative, which means you are free to Choose which sentence you want to say more: “I was smaller back then” (past), or “I am larger now” (current). Both mean the same thing! They are both different sides of just the same truth! Except now, now, now, you have the choice to value You. And You are never past You; You are You now, and you always have been You now.
Being small
We can spend time mourning the limitations of the universe, the fact that we can never know whether what we are doing now is the best we can be…
…But once we are past mourning our lack of total control over our environment, we can learn to accept that there are certain things which we cannot and have never had control over in our lives. Once we can affirm and are convinced that we live in a reality where we are mere drops in a large ocean that moves independent of you, me, or any of us at all, then we can transcend thinking of ourselves in a vacuum and place ourselves in the larger picture of things.
We can finally live in the tranquil space that understands how small we really are, how much larger the universe is than we could have ever conceived possible of being. And shouldn’t that be a wonderful thing? There are pleasures that exist that are higher than you can imagine, places far more beautiful than we could have fantasized, and mysteries more mysterious than we could have conceived? This is the fantastic real place we live in.
I have read a lot about the psychology of awe, where a sense of wonder promotes loving-kindness, as backed by a number of recent studies. I experience awe in places that I never could have possibly conceived of myself, never could have designed, never could have made happen; its experience derives from the interconnected efforts of every single part of the entire whole, where every part is required, the massive scale of collaborative experientalism. Awe is recognizing the limitations of myself, as just an individual, in the face of an explosive collective. Awe reminds me that I am just such a tiny small part of an ever expanding, monumental, beautifully complex thing we call us, earth, existence. There is so much more to what’s out there than us, and there always have been.
And so, I can finally rest my head, be small, fold into the ocean and go with the tide, allowing myself to let go of the worries and regrets of things I’ve held onto as things I could not have changed. To accept my limitations in the face of larger, grander phenomenons; the universe is better for it, and I am a part of it, too.
Once we get used to our constant state of mediocrity in the face of a great universe, once we accept how ever small we will always be, then we can start venturing into greater unknown territories. Melt our fears, shed ourselves of past baggage, get silly with it. There is so much power in being so small.
And with a greater understanding of reality as it really is, we can more effectively learn without regret and achieve our goals.
From September 16, 2015
