Most of the time, I’m a pretty firm believer in eyes forward, one foot in front of the other, just keep swimming, etc. No sense looking back with regret at the past, as there’s little you can do to change it and all of that.

Every once in a while, though, you’ll come across someone from your past who made a few different choices, took a few different turns, and ended up somewhere so completely far from where you are that it knocks the wind out of your sails, and you just have to take a little time to catch your breath and regroup.  I’m sure it works the both ways – people who seem to have made worse choices instead of better – but the former doesn’t sting as much.