Life choices and regret

“Long story short: we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose [...] is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures [...]. Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.”

- Stanley Hauerwas.

Hauerwas is not saying that choices are irrelevant, simply that they are secondary to living well. More important than choosing is receiving with thanksgiving. This is a very countercultural claim in contemporary liberal democracies, where everything is geared towards the assumption that only things we have chosen are valid and that we ought to be shielded from anything we haven't selected.