Looking Back On Life
We’ve all looked back at some point in our lives and realized we’ve made a bad decision. It doesn’t matter how good of an idea something seemed at the time, in retrospect, we know it was a pretty stupid idea. The old saying is “hindsight is 20/20”, and the analogy couldn’t be more true.
The question is: How do we see things so clearly looking back? Why wasn’t it so clear at the time?
I think of this in the same way I think of how our binocular vision works. We have two eyes because our brain needs two sources of information. It takes this information and compares what each eye has seen in order to clearly understand what is in front of us. If you were to shut one eye, your depth perception would no longer work. Try it - put one hand over your eye and look around.
This same technique is used by astronomers to understand the distance to stars. We take a photo while the Earth is in one position, and take another 6 months later when it’s in another position, and compare the two (just like our brain does for our eyes). This is known as a stellar parallax.
I know, I know - What does this have to do with anything?
When we make a decision, we are able to judge the situation from only one point in time. As our brains or an astronomer would tell us, it’s hard to put things in perspective when you’re only viewing the situation from one point.
When we look back on a decision we’ve made, we are now able to see the situation from two points in time: the moment we had to make the decision, and the moment from which we look back on that decision. Now that we can see the situation from two points, we can assess it much better. Also, the more time that passes, the clearer that decision becomes. Of course by the time it’s really clear, it’s already too late.
So never look back in regret, because we’re all really just staring at life with a hand over one of our eyes. We’re bound to walk into a wall now and then.
3 years ago