Barry,

I might posit here, having made this mistake myself (it’s inevitable, but you learn not to), that our current state of mind is to ACT NOW. Always to act now. One unfortunate side effect of that is that we almost always end up making things much worse, because we’re seeing through the red of heartbreak.

The movie Rudy shows a young man, motivated by the death of his best friend, heading to Notre Dame to try to attend college and join the football team. While in his case it worked out (assuming that the story is legit, and parts aren’t) there is a very powerful argument to let things settle. But we are not very good at impulse control. I would argue that too many of us are in react mode much of the time.