“Hindsight,” wrote my friend, “has twenty-twenty vision.”
It always seems that way, when we think back to what we could have, should have said or done. The witty retort, the other alternative…the thing we did not think of at the time… the course we ought to have taken instead of the one that we took…
Thinking about it, though, perhaps hindsight is a little more myopic than it pretends.
At the time, we did the best we could with the person we were then… and could not have done otherwise. Looking back on the past from where we now stand, we have a unique perspective. We can see how events unfolded, one after the other, from that moment until now. We look back armed with all the knowledge and experience we have gained since the moment in question and we stand as one who has grown and changed in the interim.
Those changes have not been random… they have evolved, little by little, building inevitably one upon the other, until we arrive at this moment… the one where we stand looking back with the alleged visual acuity of hindsight…or regret.
The trouble with regret, though, is that had we taken any other course, said or done anything different back in the then, the person looking back would not be the same now. Had we made the witty retort, would our emotions have been different as we walked away? How would those emotions have changed us? We cannot know.
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Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
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Thank you 🙂
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I have mostly made peace with the “other” choices … but I am always bothered and nagged about the ones where I thought at the time that maybe I WAS making the wrong choice. Where I wonder if I was being a little lazy and doing the easier thing.
Because I know I have NOT always done the best I could at the time. Sometimes, i didn’t. I waited. I was busy. I wanted a week to take care of something else … or I was busy with work or something else. Those things matter because I’m pretty sure had I made the other choice, it would have changed things. I was not always right and I didn’t always do the right stuff.
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None of us do. But without having made those errors of judgement and suffering the doubts and consequences, would we learn to change?
My own regrets are for those moments when my actions…or inaction… have caused hurt. I can live with the rest…not that we ever have any choice in that.
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I guess we have to live with all of it for lack of any time travel alternatives. One would think that over the years, we’d at least get less bothered by would we should have done, but in some ways, i am more bothered now. Maybe my conscience is harder to soothe now.
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I think experience gives us a clearer view, and perhaps a more honest view of our motives.
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More honest view, I suspect. I was much better at rationalizing back then.
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I do think we grow into an acceptance of our own human fallibility as we age… youth never feels comfortable with itself.
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I read on Banksy’s twitter that you should never regret anything for at that moment in time it was exactly what you wanted. I think that is very sound advice.
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I am not sure it is always what we wanted…but it is what we chose. Regret will not change those choices, but we can learn to make different ones.
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A subtle distinction but you are correct
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Thanks for reblogging, Michael.
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This is something I’ve come to know: the me that I am today is who grew out of the choices I had to make in the past. For better or worse, I like myself and who I turned out to be.
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I doubt if any of us can ask for more than that, Traci.
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Thanks for sharing this Traci.
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