The past contains futures that were prepared for and never arrived.

People prepared for futures that never came. Buildings were designed for expansion that did not happen, careers built on industries that vanished, plans made carefully for a world that turned a different way. Those preparations are not visible in the outcome, so history looks like a sequence of things that worked, when it was mostly a great deal of reasonable effort aimed elsewhere.

Be gentle with your own abandoned preparations, since preparing for a future that did not arrive is the normal condition, not a mistake. And when you plan, ask what would still be worth having if the expected future does not turn up. That question tends to improve the plan.