The Wisdom Project

This is a book about how we live with ourselves and with our decisions and life experiences. It’s not a book about decision-making (there are plenty of those), rather it’s a book about living with the wounds life inflicts, an examination of the way we assimilate the damage and find our way forward, and an enquiry into seeing regret not as an enemy, but as our teacher, our life guide, and the quiet keeper of our peace of mind despite the troubles we have faced. ‘No regrets’ is either the summary of a life never fully lived, or the insight-free perspective of a psychopath. Regret is an inescapable part of the human condition. Here, Mannix explores its place in our emotional responses. She examines our life journey from Innocence; through our maturing Experience that includes the maze of decision-making and perspective-finding that arises in every life and the despair of feeling broken by life events for some; navigating the emotional storms of living in an unwelcome new reality; so that we arrive at last, via a process of reaching Understanding, to a state somewhere close to Wisdom, where lies that safer harbour of rational regret. Mannix uses stories to illustrate the journey from innocence, via experience, to understanding and eventually towards wisdom. Some stories are ‘faction’, taken from her own life experience and from the people she has met along the way, appropriately anonymised. Life is full of slings and arrows. How do we respond to moments when we’ve been greedy, or angry, or cruel, or neglectful? How can we learn from our mistakes to look back on life with wisdom? This is a book about being human – with all the mistakes that entails. How we manage our regrets, or sins, often makes the difference between contentment and pain. Seeing regret as a ‘win’ is part of that process.