Here's a question for you: In considering your life to this point, what things, if anything, do you regret?

Regret, of course, is a feeling of disappointment or distress about something you wish could be different, and in reality, not many of us get through life without a few regrets. As Frank Sinatra crooned in his song "My Way": "Regrets? I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention." And that's likely how it is with many of our regrets — we might wish that a certain thing had turned out differently, but we have moved on, and we don't spend a lot of time moaning about it.

There's a famous scene involving regret in the classic movie, Casablanca, in which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman portray former lovers reunited by WW II events. Near the end of the movie, their characters, …