Moving Forward with Hindsight

In English, we say “Hindsight is 20/20.” We can clearly see how we could have made a better choice in a given experience when we look back on the experience and how it was handled and most likely how we were affected by the consequences. We are seeing it now, the “better” results.

But the saying also has a tone to it, a resigning tone, a helpless tone, because we can’t really do anything about it now.

It is gone, just like Year 2020.

Many people are braver than brave. They have a strong mind, or maybe a “timeless” mind, which seems to conveniently or selectively “forget” about this most important point living a life on a timeline. Their mind uses the hindsight to judge themselves and to beat themselves up. “Stupid.” “Why did I do it?” “How can I act that way?” Almost sincerely their mind feels their foresight should be as clear as their hindsight. That is called self-attack. The stupidity doesn’t lie in what you did, but in calling yourself stupid. Many problems come out of it – Self-denial, anxiety, procrastination, addiction… to name a few.

Here’s an example: Many people play in stock markets. But how many people make good money in it? To play in the stock market, how hard can it be? It should be easy, as we all know, to make money, we “buy low, and sell high”. Yet the stock market itself does not take it personally to you. No matter how many times you call yourself “stupid”, the stock market goes the way it goes. Really.

20/20 is the perfect vision, after the experience is over. But life is not over. It moves on, forward. No matter how worthy or unworthy we think we are, here we are in 2021, a futuristic year that we actually are in. To see into a best result, let’s just curiously and self-compassionately create one.

Let’s create a future memory, on the personal and collective level, focusing on moving forward as hindsight 2020 is already behind us.