Here's My Theory

False Lessons

I often hear people who are mad about a situation mutter something like “this is why I should have…” to themselves. This is more than okay, as long as it’s a valid lesson and not superstitious or unrelated to what happened.

Here’s an example:

Situation: You’re driving somewhere in a hurry and you remember hearing about a shortcut that you’ve never tried taking before.

So let’s say you decide to go the way you normally go because you don’t want to risk getting lost and wasting more time. A few minutes later, you get into a car accident and you  say “See? I should have taken the shortcut, this never would have happened!”

Is this true? Yes, it probably is. But there is no lesson to be learned from the situation. What would the lesson be? “Always take a shortcut, and you’ll never get into a car accident”? That’s not true at all. The car accident is completely unrelated, irrelevant, and incidental. If you could go back in time and take the other route to avoid it, that would be great. But to learn a lesson from it (besides maybe ‘drive more cautiously’) will never help you in the future. You can take a shortcut next time and get in an even worse accident.

Now, let’s go back to the initial situation. Instead of playing it safe, you take a risk and go for the shortcut that you’ve only heard about. You get lost and you end up being much later than you would have been if you had just stuck to the route you already knew. You say to yourself “See? I should have never taken this shortcut, next time I’m sticking to what I know!”

Is this a good lesson? Yes, it definitely is. It would be better to try the shortcut out at a time when you’re not rushing to get somewhere, and then you can use it at a time when you need it. This kind of a lesson will help in the future because you’re decision really did cause the mishap.

People do this all the time. Sometimes superstition will trick people into learning a lesson like “if I would have knocked on wood when I said ‘I hope I don’t get into an accident’ this would have never happened.” Once again, knocking on a piece of wood and getting into a car accident are completely independent of each other. Saying something cannot cause that thing to happen.

So next time you catch yourself learning a false lesson, just stop and laugh at yourself. Sometimes things just happen, and that’s all there is to it.