REGRETS, MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS, and the loss of “possible selves:” I think this is an interesting subject. Even if all your choices turn out well, they’re still choices, and you only get to live one out of many possible lives; in doing so you necessarily extinguish many other possible lives. In fact, as long as the value of those possible lives is more than zero, it’s theoretically possible to be in a situation where you have so much potential that anything you do is in some sense a net loss. I actually wrote something about this in the Yale Law Report (warning, big PDF file) some years ago. There’s even a mathematical model of life satisfaction as a function of options not exercised. . . .

This may also explain why people tend to get happier past their mid-forties. By that point, most of the possible selves have been extinguished (or at least the range of possibilities has narrowed) and the opportunity costs of living go down. You don’t have to veer into Barry Schwartz territory to find this interesting. And I do. I’ve forgotten who said that “the tragedy of life is that not all values can be realized,” but it’s certainly true.

UPDATE: Reader Gil Roth sends these Hegelian thoughts.