What You Knew Then Matters

“I should have known” is a serious charge to make against your earlier self. Suppose you passed up a chance to move closer to your brother and his circumstances changed two years later. The loss explains why you wish you’d made a different choice. To judge the choice itself, go back to what there was reason to know at the time.

Try telling the story up to the day you had to decide, and stop there. What did you know about the move, your obligations, and how much you wanted to be closer to him? What had he actually told you about his plans? If you knew very little because you kept putting off a conversation you owed him, that omission is worth owning. If you asked, listened, and made a reasonable choice with the information you had, the later news explains why you wish things had gone differently. It supplies no knowledge you could have used that day.

There is another possibility. You may discover that being near your brother mattered more than you were willing to admit. Perhaps you dismissed it because a better salary was easier to put a number on. That is a judgment you can learn from without pretending the move would have solved every problem. You now know to give that relationship a fuller hearing the next time an opportunity presents itself.

A man can grieve an opportunity he had good reason to pass up. He can also admit that he neglected something important. Those are different conclusions, and either may be true. Give the past enough attention to learn which one the facts support.