Or, mulling over these counterfactuals can become a habit, a knee-jerk way of responding to pangs of grief. Although we are trading painful guilt for equally painful grief, at least guilt means we had some control over the situation. Believing we had control, even though we failed to use it, means the world is not completely unpredictable. It feels better to have bad outcomes in a predictable world in which we failed, than to have bad outcomes for no discernible reason.
