Thank you Anita, for introducing this nice issue.

This question is in the heart of Proust quest:  youth is for him the Golden Age, the time of innocence:

"La jeunesse entourée de monstres et de Dieux, on ne connaît guère le calme. Il n'y a pas un des gestes qu'on a faits alors qu'on ne voudrait plus tard pouvoir abolir. Mais ce qu'on devrait regretter au contraire, c'est de ne plus pouvoir posséer la spontanéité qui nous les faisait accomplir. L'adolescence est le seul temps où l'on ait appris quelque chose". (A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleur).

"Youth surrounded by monsters and Gods, one hardly knews the calm. All the gestures we have made in our youth, we would wish to abolish them. But what we should actually regret is no longer possessing the spontaneity, which made us accomplish them. Adolescence is the only period where we have learned something."

Preparing an answer to the question, I began to establish for myself a list of regrets. I was rapidly surprised to come to a very long list. One of them: having studied very hard, for entering schools with sever numerous clausus, in a competition requiring several years of cramming, without any freetime, as if I was accepting to loose and destroy part of my youth in order to buy a prestigious school and to secure a prestigious job.

But I think one should not regret too much: the best way is to transform regrets into lessons, in order not to repeat the same mistakes we did, and be able to progress in... a second youth.

Coming back to the original innoncence glorified by Proust is the most difficult task. But it could be a nice objective. Trying to be careless and light as soon as possible could be of a great help in our life.

"Two pearls inaccessible plunge my heart in mourning, fire in my breast and  torture my mind. They are, if you  do not worry I confess you, my vanished youth and my friends went."(Persian poem of the twelfth century)
I think we all share this nostalgia for childhood and everything we lost by reaching adulthood. What I regret from my childhood? A certain naivete that made me believe that true love exists, that good always triumph over evil, this ability to marvel at all (a flower, a butterfly, a fairy tale...). But if we think about it, "the green paradise of childish loves, the innocent paradise, full of furtive pleasures"( Baudelaire), is it ever existed other than in our imagination?The suffering of the child crying because he lost his teddy bear, or because he is afraid of the dark is a real pain, and later there was the sorrows of first love, the first disillusionments,  ... I think what we regret  is a childhood dreamed by the adult we have become, a "golden age" that we have ever known but we have recreated in our imagination. We are all dreamers awake.
 Pierre,I agree with what you said and I appreciate your beautiful lesson of wisdom..

thank you, David.

It is fascinating to see how far our youth is a creation or a re-creation, based on real facts and going far beyong. A process between memory and imagination as discussed in another important topic on ThinQon.

Building a Golden Age in our dreams may be helpful to be creative.

Finally,  should we stop having any regrets and should we always going to new hopes ? I hope that we can be naive again. Capable again to marvel at a flower. Even if it is impossible, at least it is a nice perspective !