A 20-40 Look @ Hindsight

I spend a lot of time reflecting on the past. I think we all do. Hindsight is one of the great phenomena of human-nature. So great, in fact, that one of our most popular catch-phrases in the english language is hind-sight-themed:

"Hindsight," they say, "is twenty-twenty."

I believed this all of my life. A product, perhaps, of my mother using it constantly to demonstrate having to accept the consequences of a bad decision I'd made.

"I wish I hadn't done that," I'd say.

"Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty," she would reply. And I would agree. It seemed so inevitable, so true.

As I am growing up, I am finding however, that hindsight is not always accurate. The mind, it seems, has a habit of coloring the past to force it to look how we choose to remember it. Usually, this choice is subconcious, I think. At least it is for me.

I'm constantly wishing for presence of mind. In any sticky, unusual situation I find myself thinking... My God if I could just think this through. If I could just see the situation with some clarity, surely I'd be able to understand it, and thus...do the right thing. Dating, as usual, is a good point of reference for this thinking.

Whenever a relationship is getting complicated, or going wrong... whenever I think, "Why in the HELL is this so hard? What am I possibly missing..." it turns out (once I'm able to examine the problems after the fact) that the person was totally wrong for me. Or I for them. Sometimes, as is more often the case than not, I didn't even really like them to begin with. Now why isn't that something I could bring myself to understand at the time? It isn't to say that I'm not paying attention... because let's face it... you all know there's nothing I like better than analyzing myself in relation to the world around me. Still-- I fight what I will someday know to be true. All in the hopes of that (sometimes colored) future understanding.

There's absolutely no point to this except to say that it is maddening. I would like, just once, to understand something or my reactions to it, without the benefit of hindsight. (Altered perception of it or not.)

Is hindsight really twenty-twenty? Or are we concocting "understanding" of ourselves in an effort to better our future endeavors? (Self preservation? A defense mechanism?) Either way, I'm going to continue to anticipate the benefits of hindsight, and a little presence of mind. Especially, perhaps, in the times that need a little coloring.