Mourning lives unlived: Why we’re burdened by the nostalgia of ‘what if...’

When early childhood education teacher Alba Luna Ros had already settled in Ireland, where she had been working for a year after graduating, she suffered painful losses in her family in Spain. She felt that to heal the emotional wound she had to return to her home country. “I realized that I hadn’t gone to Spain on vacation when everything ended. It was very difficult for me to return to a routine, and compared to the one I had there, here [in Spain] I couldn’t find a job in my field. Those were the moments that weighed on me the most,” she says. But what would her life have been like if she had stayed in Ireland? Like her, many people face crucial decisions that, in the end, lead them down a certain path. However, over time, it’s common for them to wonder or imagine what their destiny would have been like if, instead of doing what they had done, they had followed a different path.

“When we have to make a decision, what we’re really doing is taking responsibility for what we’re doing. As free beings, we’re charged with choosing what kind of person we’re going to be. Once we’ve chosen, thinking that the situation we’re in will be a responsibility we must assume is a rather large existential step,” argues Álvaro Rodríguez, a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Sheffield. For him, the easiest way to think about whether we’ve really done the right thing is to look back. That is, to look back to the moment in which people decide to embark on a path and think about the counterfactual. In philosophy, this term consists of “talking about a possible scenario in which we keep almost all the relevant aspects of our environment constant, but change one or more aspects to imagine how everything would have changed.”

Ros lived in almost constant uncertainty in the months following her return to Spain. “I was constantly thinking about how happy I was [in Ireland], how comfortable I was, the job I had, the friends I’d left behind… The choice I made did influence my daily life. I asked myself, ‘So, why did I make this decision?’ At the time, I was very anchored in the past and what my life was like in Ireland,” she says. Comparing different scenarios that have taken place with those that haven’t is a natural mental process. “The problem perhaps comes when we overly idealize the decisions we didn’t make and demonize the scenario we did experience. What then emerges are feelings of guilt and regret. In many situations, it has a useful function, which is to discover what we can improve and prevent us from making wrong decisions in the future,” explains José María Piñeiro, a specialist at the Introspectia Psychology Center.

The case described by this expert happened to Santiago, who prefers not to give his last name. Almost four years ago, he decided to move to Madrid in search of job opportunities and leave his life in Alicante behind. However, after working precariously for several months in different places, he had only lost money and his relationships with his lifelong friends had deteriorated. “It was a decision I made hastily and without careful consideration. It has led me to become very insecure because I no longer fully trust my judgment and need to rely on other people’s advice. What would have happened if I had thought things through? I don’t know, honestly. But that can’t be changed. In that case, I can only prevent something similar from happening to me again,” he laments.

The human need to vent to others about choices made or pending is something Ros also reflects on. “After returning from Ireland, I often talked about my worries with other people. There also came a point where, because I thought about it so often, it became a rather private thing, and I was left wondering ‘what would have happened if I hadn’t returned? If I hadn’t returned, how would I be?‘”

Repeatedly thinking about something is known in psychology as rumination. “It consists of the constant repetition of those thoughts, generally accompanied by anxiety, because such rumination is unwanted,” explains Piñeiro. Instead of repeatedly rethinking the same idea and outcome, we tend to develop much more information. “Suddenly, a million questions appear, and I’m constantly trying to answer them in my head,” the psychologist summarizes. Ruminating thoughts are often more of a symptom than the cause of a problem: “What is usually recommended in psychology is that trying to stop or eliminate these types of thoughts is not generally an effective strategy. What we should do, instead, is try to locate the root of the problem that is causing it.” Sometimes these repetitive reflections function as an avoidance strategy. “It’s something that keeps us from having to make decisions in the present that will lead us to where we really want to be,” the expert emphasizes.

When decision-making becomes difficult due to fear of the consequences that may arise one way or another, the individual suffers from what is colloquially known in psychology as analysis paralysis. There is also a similar concept in philosophy, the anxiety of freedom, according to existentialism. “It will be inevitable to look back to the past to a certain extent, because it is our way of asking ourselves if we are on the right path. It is our way of comparing what we have done and what we could have done. The phrase: ‘This is so difficult! I can’t do anything but make the best decision possible,’ leads to doing nothing, because epistemically we don’t have access to all the relevant considerations. We are condemned to choice,” explains philosophy expert Rodríguez. For existentialism, trying to delegate responsibilities means being inauthentic: “For example, saying: ‘This is too difficult. I can’t do anything. I’d rather stay put or ask someone else to tell me what to do.‘”

But these decisions aren’t always made by oneself; other factors can influence one’s life. This is the case of Juan Manuel Jiménez. His father survived a tragic accident in 1959 in a coal mine in Utrillas, a town in Teruel, Spain, after failing to show up for work that day. At the end of August, a dynamite explosion killed 13 miners and seriously injured another seven. “My father, who was supposed to be on shift that day, couldn’t go to work due to illness. He was spared such a sad end, although it marked him forever. Years later, I was born, and I often think that, thanks to that illness and that absence, I’m here today. When he retired, he decided we would all move to Zaragoza to give me a better future, far from that coal-mining landscape,” Jiménez recalls. Although he wasn’t the one who made the decision, it’s a situation that has always been on his mind. “If that hadn’t happened, we probably would have continued living in the village, and I wouldn’t have the life I enjoy now. I often wonder how everything would have changed for me, since I hadn’t even been born at the time of the accident.”

As American philosopher Christine Korsgaard points out, when we decide, it doesn’t just mean we’re passing up one opportunity or another, but rather that we’re making a commitment to the future. In Ros’ case, she affirms that she has accepted the life she has because she returned to Ireland and closed that period of her life on her own: “I spent about a year wondering what would have happened if these circumstances hadn’t occurred. I said to myself: ‘I need to go back and be there, and return to Spain when I feel like it and decide to. If I hadn’t returned, I’d still be worrying about it.‘” For his part, Santiago also affirms that, after some time, he sees that mistake from a different perspective, more because of the years that have passed since then than because he chose to close that period on his own.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition