Irvin Yalom. Executioner of love (№ 454744)

The feeling that more needed to be done reflects, I think, an underlying desire to control the uncontrollable. After all, if a person feels guilty about not doing something they should have done, then it follows that something could have been done - a convenient thought that distracts us from our pitiful helplessness in the face of death. Clothed in an elaborate illusion of limitless possibilities, we all, at least until the onset of a mid-life crisis, hold on to the belief that our existence is an endlessly ascending spiral of achievement, dependent only on our will.