Regret Maximization Sickness

Too busy languishing in regret to make room for hope

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Source: Clark Kelley Price

Turning

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ teaches the parable of the prodigal son. A man had two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance and leaves, running off to the big city, and wastes all his money on "riotous living." After he is left with nothing, he finds himself eating out of a trough with the pigs.

But then, Christ says, he "came to himself." I like the way Psalms puts it: "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies." There is a Hebrew word that has a similar sentiment: שׁוּב — shuv — which means to turn back, return, go back, or turn around. In English, the word is repentance.

I heard a talk by Russell M. Nelson, who I believe is akin to a modern-day Moses, where he explained that "the word for repentance in the Greek New Testament is metanoeo. The prefix meta- means 'change.' The suffix -noeo is related to Greek words that mean 'mind,' 'knowledge,' 'spirit,' and 'breath.'"

So when the Prodigal Son "came to himself" it means he turned. Turned away from sin and towards God. He changed his mind, his knowledge, his spirit. When he returned to his father, he thought he could at least be a servant. But when he returned, his father didn't miss a beat. "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." No brow-beating, no blaming. Just joy at a return.

In introducing the parable, Christ explained that "there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."

Regret

So. Why did I start a blog post on an investing blog with the prodigal son? Because the prodigal son is the story I think of most when I reflect on regret. Regret is a poison. The sunk cost fallacy of the soul. Regret will, more often than not, lead us to making worse decisions rather than better decisions.

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a similar post entitled "Regret Porn." In it, I explained this common feeling of FOMO in reverse. Seeing a sign that says "what would you have if you put $10K into Amazon's IPO?" or "what if you had bought Bitcoin in 2012?" These what-if scenarios are designed to foster regret.

In that piece, I also talked about Jeff Bezos' "regret minimization framework." Trying to do the thing that you will most regret NOT doing when you're 80 years old.

But today, as I find myself ruminating on a similar topic, I realize that so much of life has become focused not on regret minimization but on regret maximization. We are all sick with regret. It weaves together a fear cocktail that paralyzes so many.

Regret Maximization

I'm a big fan of movies. In particular, I'm a big fan of superhero movies. Most recently, I saw Marvel's Thunderbolts. I think its a very good movie. But one line, in particular, has stuck with me. And not just because Florence Pugh is an exceptional actor, but because of the emotion it brought up in me.

In the scene, Florence Pugh's character Yelena is talking to Alexei, who raised her. Filled with emotion, she says:

"Dad, I'm so alone. I don't have anything anymore. All I do is sit, look at my phone, and think of all the terrible things that I've done. And then I go to work. And then I drink. And then I come home to no one. And I sit and I think about all the terrible things that I've done again."

Alexei interrupts, his eyes filling with tears. "Yelena, stop. We all have things that we regret." But for Yelena it's too much. "No, but I have so many."

I have a different rant that maybe I'll write about here someday. But the TLDR is that the majority of Marvel movies have revolved around heroes almost exclusively focused on self-reflection. People look inside themselves and find greatness. But very rarely are the heroes in the Marvel movies seeking redemption.

Thunderbolts is a good movie. But in particular I think it's an important movie for Marvel because it exposes a narrative that is allowed to focus on characters who are seeking redemption without being defined by that journey.

Like any good Dad should, Alexei is able to comfort his daughter, describing the light he sees when he looks at her:

"When I look at you, I don't see your mistakes. That's why we need each other."

While the majority of us may not be international super spies with a lot of red in our ledger, we have all made suboptimal decisions. Whether it was proactively negative in that we made choices that hurt people, damaged ourselves, or caused suffering for those around us, or those of us that have made choices that were reactively negative; we lost money, we didn't make a trade or accept a job offer that we should have in hindsight. Sins of omission and sins of commission.

In any decision we've made, we can feel overcome by regret. We realize we are not who we wish we were and we give up. Or we feel like the decisions we make can only make things worse, so why not just maintain the status quo and avoid for meaningful disruptions.

So many of the people around me (myself included) seem like we're going through life enduring a regret maximization framework. Every experience we have, its as if we're looking to identify any and all regret we can squeeze out of that experience. Pouring salt in the wound, just for good measure.

But there is a better way. There is grace that we can offer ourselves. For those who so choose, there is also grace that Jesus Christ can offer. There is another talk that I've always enjoyed about the grace that Christ can offer in the pursuit of not giving up or being overcome by the regret that we may have maximized:

"There should never be just two options: perfection or giving up. When learning the piano, are the only options performing at Carnegie Hall or quitting? No. Growth and development take time. Learning takes time. When we understand grace, we understand that God is long-suffering, that change is a process, and that repentance is a pattern in our lives. When we understand grace, we understand that the blessings of Christ’s Atonement are continuous and His strength is perfect in our weakness. When we understand grace, we can “continue in patience until [we] are perfected."

Therefore, What?

Investing is the act of voting for the future. You vote with your dollars. You're not inventing the future. That's what we need founders for. But investing, by its nature, is typically an act of hope. Granted, you can vote for scenarios that lack hope. But venture capitalists, in particular, need to be hopeful people.

Regret is the antidote to hope. When I look back and wish the future from yesterday looked different than the today that I'm living in, I cede my control. I cannot change the past, so regret can only be self-punishment.

Some would say regret can be instructive. But I disagree. Mistakes can be instructive. Regret is the act of lingering on mistakes. And that lingering takes the place that hope requires in order to survive.

So as we seek to build the future, whether the future of space travel or simply our future selves, we have to have hope. And in so doing, we can cast out regret. We don't have to feel pain over what could have been. We remain focused on what may be. And the best thing about the future is that it never gets here. So having consistent hope in the future can be an ongoing lifestyle choice. We're too busy being excited about the future that we won't have time to languish in regret about the past.

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