The sentiment that one “should have done something more” reflects, it seems to me, an underlying wish to control the uncontrollable. After all, if one is guilty about not having done something that one should have done, then it follows that there is something that could have been done—a comforting thought that decoys us from our pathetic helplessness in the face of death. Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one’s mid-life crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on
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