hindsight is 20/20

They say hindsight is 20/20.  We’ve all heard this saying, probably even used it to justify one of our own errors in judgement.  Bad decisions need blame and blame needs justifying.  Basically, the school of thought is if I’m taking the blame then I’m softening it with a healthy dose of justification first.  But let the record show hindsight is NOT 20/20, at least not from where I’m standing.  In fact, hindsight is actually blind.  Let me explain....

The theory that hindsight is 20/20 is based on a few simple assumptions.

  1-One choice offers a positive outcome, the other a negative one.

2-If the option you choose turned out badly, then the alternative path was guaranteed to have offered a positive outcome.

3-There can be only one right choice.

Based on these statements, it’s easy to prove hindsight is not 20/20 because none of it’s founding assumptions are correct 100% of the time.  For example, the first assumption states that one option is good and the other bad.  But that’s not always the case.  You might be standing at a crossroads trying to decide if you should accept a job offer for an IT position in California or London when in reality you shouldn’t be working in the IT field at all because your true gift is in the kitchen and you should be studying at some world class cooking academy.  Or maybe IT is your gig and it doesn’t matter if you work in Cali or London because you’re going to carve out a great life either way.  Life is not made on only black or white decisions....there are thousands of shades of gray.

The second assumption guarantees a positive outcome if you choose correctly but guarantees can only be offered with knowledge.  If you were a lab tech observing a rat in a maze, you could safely guarantee the mouse that path A ends abruptly at a wall and choosing path B will offer a life-or-death encounter with a baited trap.  Because you can see the outcome of every possible decision before the animal enters the maze, you can guarantee only path C offers the possibility of being rewarded with a piece of cheese at the end of its journey.  Only with complete knowledge of past, present and future events can “guarantees” be offered.  We all seem to make assumptions with no knowledge, guaranteeing ourselves that if we had only chosen the other path, everything would have turned out so much better.  But in reality we have no way of knowing for sure.  Even if the chosen path ends badly, it doesn’t mean the other path wouldn’t have been even worse.  We’ll never know if we chose the lesser of two evils or not because we aren’t looking down at the maze.

Lastly and probably most importantly, the final assumption states there can be only one right choice.  This rule forces us to make judgements of our lives, a technique taught to us as children.  During my parents generation, children were told they were good or bad, depending on their actions.  The lesson is now taught in a more politically correct manner using the labels of good or bad choices instead of good or bad children.  As we age, decisions develop more depth and begin to focus on the future instead of the present moment.  We begin taking “college prep” classes and weighing our choices by how they will affect our future.  Each choice we make takes on a life of it’s own with enough power to singlehandedly make or break the balance of our life.  Is it really possible that taking a break from studying for your SAT’s for one night to watch your high school football team compete for the district championship will cost you your acceptance into an Ivy League college?  Does graduating from a state college instead of Harvard guarantee you a mediocre career?  Is it not possible to work your butt off and still become the darling of Wall Street, no matter which college you attended?  Are only Ivy League grads guaranteed stellar lives?  Does every decision from preschool to the grave have to carry the weight of our world on it?  Is it not possible to trip, recover and continue on?  Can we not make all the right choices but decide to change our destination mid-trek and still find Nirvana? 

And so I ask.... if hindsight is not 20/20, and it clearly is not, then why do we spend so much time looking back?