If Only How To Turn Regret Into Opportunity

Chapter 1 Benchmarking Reality Terry Malloy, the Marlon Brando character in the 1954 filmOn the Waterfront, is a former boxer obsessed with a fight he deliberately lost because of mob pressure. If he hadn't taken a dive, he "could have been a contender," so he says in the film's signature line, "instead of a bum, which is what I am." Malloy's very identity hinges on a fork in the road and a particular road not taken, defined on the surface by a boxing victory but more deeply by a commitment to personal integrity that could have been, and yet may still possibly come to be. In short, Malloy defines the entirety of his life by the contrast to what he might have been. Of course, this makes for personal anguish, but the film also illuminates how a singular life-defining counterfactual can motivate positive changeby the end of the film, Malloy has risked his life to make a stand against mob influence at the dock where he works. Counterfactuals can be a defining aspect of personal identity. And as we'll see throughout this book, counterfactuals, even if painful, hold within them the power to pushindividualstoward regeneration and renewal. Counterfactual thoughts provide benchmarks for reality. By offering standards of comparison (thishappened instead ofthat), they place the factual events of our lives into context. An experience feels all the more precious, or all the more poignant, if it very nearly never happened. At the broadest level, people's sense of identity and personality can be shaped by forks in the road, by the lives they might have lived, the riches and disasters that might have been. At the unconscious level, each event in our lives gains meaning via a silent comparison to an alternative, counterfactual event that might have taken place instead. And at the level of our most passionate feelings, counterfactuals (along with other kinds of commonly drawn comparisons) sculpt the contours of our emotions, making us feel worse or better depending on what exactly might have been. On every level, thinking about what might have been shapes the very meaning we see in life. Counterfactuals are a product of what might commonly be called imagination, but they are also much more. Certainly both counterfactual and imagination refer to creative, generative thought processes: thoughts that go boldly where no thoughts have gone before. But there are at least two important ways that counterfactuals stand apart from imagination. First, we often assume that some people have a good imagination, say Walt Disney or Steven Spielberg, whereas many more of us possess at best mediocre imaginations, and some (a couple of my high school teachers come to mind at this point) little or none at all. Buteveryonegenerates counterfactuals. All of us, young and old, every day, with little difficulty. Counterfactuals are an automatic product of the normal operation of human brains. Second, we tend to think of imagination as boundless, unrestrained, unrealistic. Maybe even silly. By contrast, counterfactuals are quite realistic. They are disciplined, in a way that preserves the essential fabric of reality while altering just one or a few elements. Of the numerous counterfactuals that you generate on a daily basis, nearly all are grounded in fact:What if I had driven a different route to work? I should have remembered to pack a lunch rather than having to spend money at the cafeteria. I shouldn't have had that piece of cake for dessert.Seen in this light, it is clear that rather few of our daily counterfactuals are bizarre:What if I attended a college on another planet?What if I had a flying car like onThe Jetsons?It would be great if I had eight arms.Of course, wecouldimagine such things, if we put our minds to it, but the point is that we don't. At least not very often. Such bizarRoese, Neal J. is the author of 'If Only How To Turn Regret Into Opportunity', published 2005 under ISBN 9780767915779 and ISBN 0767915771.