How I Diffused a Decade-Long Family Fight

0:00It's like if you really see someone and you see all the things that they went through and the things that they that happened to them to become who they are, then you understand them and then you understand why they did X, Y, and Z. Because if we don't understand, we assume that it's because they're just evil people. And most people aren't that way. They're this way because they've been reinforced or punished for doing something like that in the past. And especially for her, she was reinforced for acting a certain way over and over and over again to the point that it was it was core to her character. And so when that got put on me, I was like, I hate you. You're terrible. You're evil.

0:25Like blah. But like when I looked at it on much longer time horizon of like she was four years old when she came here. She couldn't speak English. She got beat up as a kid. Like all these things. I'm like, you know what? Maybe give her a little grace, you know? And I remember when when I came back and it was right around that same time where I realized I was giving this person all this power. She yelled at me for something when I came back home from college my freshman year. And it was a standard fight, you know, like here's the button that I press to get into the normal fight that we get into. Um I just remember she hit the button and I just like wasn't that upset. And I it's like I felt nothing.

0:54She like hit the button. and she like hit it again harder and I was like and I just remember looking at her and being like I get it I'm sorry like you had a tough tough life and then she just broke down and you know started crying because it was like she felt understood and I think um I know that was a roundabout way of getting back to regrets but he regretted how he had raised her but his through his regrets I got to see why she was the way she was and then it diffused the bomb that was between me and Did I tell you that story Douglas Murray told me about regrets from Christopher Hitchens?

1:29>> Brilliant. So, Christopher Hitchens, one of the new atheists, uh, was sat in some British pub with Douglas Murray when Douglas is young. And, you know, you can imagine it's some musty Chesterfield sofa. He's probably got a cigarette in his mouth and it's glass of scotch or something. And uh Douglas is vacasillating between these two different choices that he needs to make. And he is um complaining, lamenting the fact that I have this thing, but I have this thing and if I do this thing, I can't do this thing. And and what do I do? And apparently Hitch like sat back and [gasps] [sighs] Douglas in life we must choose our regrets.

2:16>> And I was like, [ __ ] I'm going to go. >> So, I'm three Manhattan deep in Douglas Murray's apartment in Manhattan at 2:00 in the morning and he sneaks off to the toilet. And I quickly write this down cuz I know that my like half cut alcohol brain isn't going to remember it. So, I note it down. That was all the trigger that I needed, which is also a good argument for noting things down. >> And I reflected I must reflected on that for a year. I must have thought about it for a year. In life, we must choose our regrets. What the [ __ ] does that mean?

2:45Okay, first off, in an existence where opportunity cost is baked in because you don't get to split test life and by doing a thing, you can't do a different thing. I have the choice between going to the gym and going to the theme park. If I go to the gym, therefore, I can't go to the theme park. Even if the decision of going to the gym was the right call, I will always have the open loop of yeah, but what if I'd gone to the theme park? You can't ever know, right? Okay. So that means that fundamentally regrets are baked in to our existence.

3:15And I'd always thought that the reason I had a regret was due to some suboptimal decision I had made. If only I'd made this decision better, I could have ameliated the regret. Okay, so >> regrets are an unavoidable part of being a human and they're a byproduct of opportunity cost, which you can't get away from. But what does it mean that you have to choose your regrets? Okay.

3:38Well, if regrets are inevitable, if they're going to happen no matter what, …