Who are these people who say No Regrets!?

I was wondering, after blogging that WaPo article "I cut off all contact with my mother," where the author had "interviewed more than 50 people who have estranged themselves from family members" and had "yet to meet a single one who regrets it."

No Regrets is kind of slogan for some people, isn't it? Do you have no regrets? Here, listen to Edith Piaf sing "Non, je ne regrette rien" while you gather your thoughts:



And here's Elvis ("Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention"):



I Googled "people who say no regrets":

1. "15 Things People Who Have No Regrets Don’t Do" (Lifehack): "Living with no regrets is freeing. It means not worrying and stressing over every little thing and, most importantly, it means that you don’t look back on something and wish it had gone another way...."

2. "Here’s Why You Should Stop Saying That You Have No Regrets" (HuffPo): "While some view regret as a hindrance to productivity, [author Brené Brown] actually sees it as something quite different. 'Regret, I think, is a function of empathy,' she says. Empathy is... the 'antidote to shame'.... 'When people say, "I have no regrets," I think, 'That seems dangerous to me. Do you not look back, ever, and say, "If I had this to do over again, I wish I would have done it another way."'"

3. "What do people mean when they say they 'have no regrets?' I'm genuinely puzzled every time somebody (usually a celebrity) says something like this. I would think having regrets is a natural part of human life... especially when it comes to hurting someone else. I do not know why someone would NOT have regrets about being a jerk or asshole at at least one point in his or her life...."(AskMetafilter).

4. From the answers to the AskMetafilter question above, somebody quotes Nietzsche: "What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'"

5. At Quora, somebody asks, "Why do so many people say 'I have no regrets'? How can that even be possible?" The highest-rated answer: "I think when people say this, they don't really mean they have no regrets. I’m pretty sure it’s an expression said to convey the idea that they're happy with their lives, and where they ended up. Their mistakes have led them to where they are, and they wouldn't change the past because that would change the present. If not that, the only other reason I can think of is rebellion. For example, when a teenager goes and gets a tattoo against his/her parents’ blessing, they might say, 'no regrets' to express their lack of bother to what authority tells them to do." [NOTE: A lot of people get tattoos that say "No Regrets" — sometimes misspelled.]

6. "The Idea of Living Life with 'No Regrets' Is Ridiculous and Unhealthy/Regret is a complicated but essential emotion. To have them? Human. To ignore them? Dumb" (Fatherly): "When you ask yourself, What is it that I’m regretting and why am I regretting it? The answer — if you’re open to the answer — may be surprising. Everyone has this narrative of who they are. But I think when you interrogate your own regret honestly, you may find out that you’re not really who you thought you were. Your values are different and your relationship to the world is different. I think that can be scary. But it’s very worthwhile."

7. "Having No Regrets Means Having Not Lived/If you haven’t experienced regret, you may lack experience" by Noam Shpancer Ph.D. (Psychology Today): "[L]ife—lived once and forward as it is—does not let us conduct experiments on imagined alternatives.... [O]nce we pick option A, option A is all we actually know. If it turns out worse than we imagined, we may feel regret, since we can easily imagine that taking option B would have led to better consequences. But in fact, we often can’t know that. It is also likely that option B would have led us to much worse consequences.... The work of therapy... often involves normalizing regret, using it for self-learning and growth, and accepting it as part of one’s functional inner architecture and, often, the mark of a life lived in earnest."