Outcome

When we look back on our lives we remember incidents where we might rethink the way we acted or failed to act. 

They can stay burned in the memory without knowledge of how a different action from us might have altered the outcome. 

This is the could've should've we humans love to indulge in our attempt to second guess. 

Two things come to mind here. One is that we are imperfect beings and the other is that the better outcome we imagine (had our input been different) might not have come to pass. 

We like to think we are to blame for much but sometimes forget to factor in that we had no ill will or malice when we reacted. 

We let our judgement of a hair trigger human response stew in the brain sometimes for years without a satisfactory conclusion. 

The English poet Alexander Pope coined the phrase "to err is human, to forgive divine" and I try to remember that when I fall into the trap of trying to go down conceptual rabbit holes.

Forgiving also includes ourselves.