Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.

Stick to now. Put right the things you can put right today, and let the ones from back then go.

Life,’ thought Septimus, ... ‘you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.

Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them back. She began to feel an urgency, a need to seize an opportunity. Before anyone else did.

That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.