A reflection on the nature of choice and regret
"without your past,
you could never have arrived-
so wondrously and brutally,
By design or some violent, exquisite happenstance
...here."
Reputation, “Why She Disappeared” – The Blonde Woman from Tennessee
Me, roughly 2 weeks before I moved to Hong Kong, on the slopes of Mt. Etna, reading a Latin description of the eruption of Etna
Today marks a year to the day that I ended a long-term relationship, cementing my choice to come to Hong Kong. Which means it’s been a year since people started asking me whether I regret my choice, or if I made the right one. If you had anything approaching an honest conversation with me between February-August 2024, we would have discussed my utter turmoil over whether I was doing the right thing. But I don’t think I’ll ever really know. What would ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ actually look like?
There are many ways in which coming to Hong Kong has been an actively terrible decision. I spend about ¾ of my free time begging people to hang out with me, to no avail. And I spend the other ¼ feeling like the people around me just don’t ‘get’ me, and I just don’t ‘get’ them. And most days, I feel a deep sense of loneliness.
But I am where I am and who I am as a result of everything that happened to me, as Taylor said. My other key inspiration, Achilles in the Iliad, springs to mind:
“There stand in the house of Zeus two jars of gifts he grants to mortals, from one of which he grants evil, and from the other he grants blessings. The one to whom Zeus who delights in lightning has granted a mixed gift, that man at one time meets with evil, and at another time, meets with fortune” – Iliad 24.527-530
And Zeus has drawn from the good jar for me too: through connecting with wonderful like-minded people here, I’ve rediscovered my passion for reading; I’m surrounded by kind people, and I love my work – maybe I’m in the office at 2am, but I’m genuinely empowered by what I do. I now hike and play tennis regularly, and I have many other fulfilling hobbies I didn’t have in London. My life is just fundamentally different because I chose to come to Hong Kong.
Some new friends I’ve made in this scary, wonderful chapter I find myself in
The question naturally arises: today, do I wish I chose to stay in London? But before I bring myself to answer I’m reminded of something a friend (who is far wiser than me) said to me:
When you wish you’d done something differently, at what point are you simply wishing you were a different person?
It’s simple, self-fulfilling cycle: our choices define who we are, and who we are subsequently defines our choices.
I look back on the 3 choices I consider to be the major forks in my life: at 13, sitting the Eton scholarship without a confirmed place; at 18, turning down my other offers and re-applying to Oxford; and at 24, signing the contract to join Swire in Hong Kong.
I often wonder how my life would have turned out, if it would have been better if I accepted my place to Westminster, and not sit the Eton scholarship; if I took my place at UCL or Durham; if I didn’t take the leap to come to Hong Kong. But in making those choices, I did not make the ‘right’ choice; I was simply not the person who would have chosen differently.
I am left with the conclusion that regret is nothing but a thought experiment. Certainly, we should reflect on our choices and why we made them; it is interesting to wonder what we would do differently if confronted with the same choice again. But do we really have the time to question our choices? On any given day, we have a million different choices, and a million different realities could spawn from each of those choices. But we’ll never live in any of those realities, nor do we live in a ‘better’ world; it’s cliché, but the only world that exists is the one we live in.
My friends in their early 20s like to joke that now I’m 25, I’m basically an old man. And to be fair, I have back problems, and I sigh when I sit down. As an old man at the ripe old age of 25, I now measure my life in decades. With my aged wisdom, I realise that across 2.5 decades, it wasn’t just one decision in March 2024 that brought me here, but rather, millions of choices every single day. And I must live with each and every single one of those choices.
But as a young man with six decades ahead of me, give or take, I cannot sit here and wonder about what could have been. I live in a world of my own creation, where every day, I must carefully consider the next choice I make and the potential ramifications. I do not have the luxury of regret.
But also, why the hell would I waste my time spent on regret? I could spend my time moping about coming to Hong Kong and giving up the life I’d known. Or I can embrace the following truths: in March 2024, I made a choice because of who I am, I live with all the consequences of that choice, good and bad, and I understand myself more for it. And I am now more ready for the next choice I will have to make.
“The doer suffers. It is law.” – Agamemnon, Aeschylus, l. 1564
I don’t have time for regret, I’m too busy wearing my fucking sick bucket hat