Perhaps the work he’s doing now is compensation for failures in his past. In which case, brooding only distracts him from what he is obliged to do, and he is best advised to let the past be past, the better to fulfill his mission. Denial endures because it soothes.
This is the idea that the arbiter of truth/justice (though he reiterates time and time again that they don’t operate in justice) has something in their past that requires penance in the form of setting things right in the presence.
