The one thing we learn from history, is that we do not learn from history.

I guess that's why we dream of time travel -- so we can just go back and do those small things, instead of picking up a pile of history books and reading about what the Romans or Chinese (or whoever) wrote about what they wish they had done (and then maybe doing it). It's a technology that lets us pretend to be wise and have made the right choices all along -- a device that lets us escape regret.

To be fair though, reading some small fraction of those history books is quite a time investment for most people, and we seem to need those lessons (and be wise enough to take them to heart) at the exact time in our lives when we don't have any free time to learn them. I'm feeling this personally a lot right now. It's like we all learn why our reach exceeds our grasp just barely too late to really do much about it, except maybe read the stories of how that happened to everyone else, and know we are in good company.