The Best Choice At Each Juncture

People usually have to make decisions. We reach a juncture where a choice has to be made, so we weigh our options, pick the best option we can see, and move on. It's a pretty simple task, which we and our characters often do.

What isn't done as often, though, is planning several junctures ahead. You make a decision and follow through with it, and you are happy that it was the best choice. But sometimes some terrible thing happens afterward and you suddenly find yourself looking back, wishing you had made a different choice.

The reason we usually don't do it is that it's impossible. You can't know the future. Some things are completely out of your control. As such, your decision appeared to be the wrong one, but it wasn't. You made the best choice at the juncture.

In stories, too many people try to make everything fit perfectly into a neat little bow. Even worse, a Mary Sue character will just be so flawless that nothing bad ever happens because they always make the best decision. That's boring. When you have characters who try to do good things, but get thrown a curve ball, they scamper to try to fix what has been made wrong, and that's interesting (it also sounds really sick when described that way, audience members enjoying watching other people struggle).

In life, you are the character. Shit happens. You may find a moment of weakness where you keep wishing things were different, but that's not a useful path. The only thing you can know is that if things were different, then they might not be the same. So long as you make the best choice based on everything you know, you should never feel bad for what you've done.