Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” —Sydney Harris

If you realize that you have done this, you need to stop and look at your characters again. You’ve got to go into these people, and since you don’t know them, this means that you need to go into you, wonderful you, who has so many problems and idiosyncrasies—you, who will be able to figure out what is true for these people and hence, what they would or would not do in a given situation.

Although I am a product of my circumstances, I believe we carry knowledge within us from elsewhere, enabling us to make better choices in this life. If we get the right parents, as I did, these choices come easier. Inner knowing helped me choose the right mentors in the form of brave managers, who took the risk of betting on a darkie in time when people like me weren’t considered for thinking roles in business.

Looking back, it’s clear that, for many of my teenage choices, what mattered most was not the fun I had at the time—whether buildering was a thrill (it was) or whether studying medicine at Edinburgh involved better parties. Rather, what mattered most was the impact of these choices on the rest of my life, whether I was risking death or altering the values that would guide my future self.

Tracing forward from these remembrances of things past gives us the chance to re-experience and reframe these beliefs. Doing so liberates us from the confounding forces we label as fate, destiny, or—even more frequently—the other person’s “fault.” We will never sort through them all, of course, but what we don’t sort through impedes our happiness. It tricks us into using the rest of our lives—and the people we love, the professions we choose, the organizations we lead—to try to close the gaping wounds from childhood.