Epictetus once said that every situation comes with two “handles.” One is heavy and impossible to lift—it represents focusing on the hurt, the unfairness, or the wrongdoing. The other is light enough to carry—it’s the perspective that sees connection, shared humanity, and lessons to be learned. Which handle you grab determines how you live with what’s happened.

A central Stoic discipline is the art of distinguishing between what belongs to us and what doesn’t—between the parts of life we can alter and the parts we must accept. When it comes to the past, this division becomes even more important.

Looking back, we can grip the handle that frames our experience as a personal injury, something fated to go wrong from the start. Or, we can choose the other handle—the one that allows us to salvage value, wisdom, or gratitude from even painful chapters.

Taking that second handle requires a sober admission: the past cannot be undone. No matter how much it hurt us or someone else, the facts are fixed. As Dr. Edith Eger told Ryan Holiday during a conversation about regret, the way out of guilt is often just one sentence:

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.”
That’s it—lesson learned, guilt released.

The trouble is, we’ve been conditioned to overestimate our influence on outcomes. We convince ourselves that replaying events will somehow allow us to rewrite them. But certain realities are immovable.

Some regrets fall within our power to address—like a bad haircut we can restyle or wait to grow out. Others, like insulting a boss in a moment of anger before walking out, are beyond recall. The words are spoken; the scene is done. The sooner we separate what we can act on from what we must release, the lighter our burden becomes.