Bernard Mukasa
Sometimes I catch myself wishing I could go back and change just one moment. I know exactly which one but that is a story for another piece. But almost immediately, another thought follows: “If I changed that one thing… what else would quietly disappear from my life?”
For me, this is not just theory. I genuinely ended up in law school by mistake — because of one ordinary conversation and a chance meeting on a day that could easily have gone differently. If that small moment had changed, my entire career would likely be different. I would be a different person, working with different people, shaped by different pressures. I often wonder whether the version of me writing this today would even exist.
Same applies to many other decisions I made, turning down that first LLM – if I had not, then I would be a human rights lawyer and not a commercial one. Or even a thing as small as opting to not ignore the weird man making small talk next to me on a flight, turns out he became one of my top 3 paying clients today. So many examples in so many aspects of my life.
The truth is, the past is not made up of neat, isolated events. It is a chain. A missed opportunity leads to a new door. A failed plan creates space for a better one. A difficult season teaches patience, humility and courage. When we imagine changing one moment, we usually picture only the benefit — not the quiet losses that would come with it.
There is also something uncomfortable about rewriting the past for our own comfort. Our choices affected other people too. A colleague learned resilience. A friend grew stronger. Someone found confidence because things didn’t work out perfectly and they survived it. I look at my own family, defined by our early losses, and wonder if they catapulted us into the people we are today, so without them, then what? Changing one moment in our story would quietly rewrite parts of theirs as well. And is that fair?
Most of what truly matters in leadership, work and relationships is learned the hard way — through mistakes, conflict, loss, disappointment and recovery. If we kept editing yesterday, we would never learn how to fix today. Growth does not come from perfect decisions. It comes from taking responsibility for imperfect ones. The past with all its imperfections, trained us for the present.
Refusing to change the past is not weakness. It is responsibility. I cannot revise what shaped me — but I can decide how it shapes the person I am becoming.
My past is not a mistake. It is the foundation. (just like I hope this piece is the foundation of many more to come!)
What do you guys think? (Let me know in the comments).
Bernz
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