There’s a popular party game called “Never have I ever.” In it, participants admit to things they have not done that they believe other participants have done.
Obviously, for each of us, there are a lot of things that we haven’t done. The question is whether we regret that or not. Are these things that we wish we had done or things we’re glad we avoided?
Sometimes, the reason we don’t do something is because of opportunity cost – by making a decision, we decide not to do something else because the two things are mutually exclusive. It’s like in the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. He chooses his path, one that is different from what most people do. At the end of the poem, looking back on his life, he recognizes that that decision was a turning point in his life, and he seems a little bit sad about what it cost him:
I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Does it mean that the traveler wishes he had made a different decision, that he had chosen the other path. Not necessarily. But it’s hard not to think about what he missed out on.
Include statement from “The Paradox of Choice” about buyer’s remorse.
The hope is that your “never have I ever” list is a result of opportunity cost – things you missed out on because you made a decision – and not a result of making no decision at all. When people are on their death beds, they tend to regret the things they didn’t do, not the things they did.