This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vidantan.

Sometimes it can feel like the past is all we have, that memory is all that we are.

It's why we always return to what we did yesterday, rehashing, revisiting,

that grandparents we should have visited, that summer that lasted forever.

Our personal reconstructions of the past, edited, polished, and misremembered

are how we make meaning of ourselves in the present.

Today, two emotions that take us back in time, regret and nostalgia.

The things we wish we could return to,

It's like, where did all this time go?

How do I already have a daughter that's kind of written from high school?

And the things we wish we could change.

My biggest regret is not listening to my father tell me about the mundane things that happened to him during the day.

How can we make these feelings work for us and what can we learn from them?

Looking to our past to understand our present, this week on Hidden Brain.

Whether or not you believe in them, you probably have ghosts that haunt you.

Not something sinister, but something you just can't get rid of.

Hi there, Shankar and friends.

Hello, Shankar.

Hi.

I was calling about, hopefully I'm saying it, regrets I've had a few,

I won't list all of them.

My boyfriend of a year and I end our relationship.

...