I’ve always had perfect vision. Though my eyes were a little weak in muscles (I still can’t cross them), the seeing part was perfect. However, despite my best efforts at seeing, I still struggle to see as well looking forward as I can see looking back.
Hindsight is an interesting thing. I’ve made countless decisions in my life and I look back now on some of those and think, “Wow – that was dumb.” How much better off would I be had I done it this way or said that thing? I think back about mistakes I’ve made and wonder what I was thinking, if I was thinking at all. How can I be so absent-minded.
It is often said hindsight is 20/20, but I have come to the conclusion that this statement is false. Sure, looking back I can see the result of the choice I made clearly and what choice would have been better for me. But hindsight is not just perfect vision. It is often a magnified tunnel vision of the incident in question. For example, I recently made the decision to take a different route to work. It was a bad decision in hindsight because it ended up taking almost 10 minutes longer than going my regular route would have. But that hindsight does not consider the factors that could have been altered by my going another way. Had I gone the other way, would there be someone that didn’t make it through a light on time because they were one car further back? What about the lady that I let turn on to the street? Would she have made it on time? Was there a speed trap on that road? Did anyone have an accident? I don’t know any of these things and without researching every detail (which is impossible to do) its hard to look at the whole picture. So maybe hindsight is 20/20, but it is a very small scope you are looking through when you see that 20/20.
James Mapes once said “Assumptions are the death of possibilities.” If this is true, then assuming that hindsight is accurate causes the loss of all the possibilities that might have happened. Maybe by going that other way I let someone else get through the light and make it to work on time. Maybe I ruined someone’s day by slowing down traffic on the other route. Assuming that I should have gone the other way kills the possibility of me helping that lady and the possibility of that car that took my place in the traffic queue making it there faster. This is just a tiny example of how our hindsight doesn’t take the whole picture into account.
What gets really crazy is when you can use hindsight without the binoculars. What I mean is what if you look at events that happened and the effects that they have caused. While we can’t do this with decisions we didn’t make (like I can’t determine what would have happened had I gone the other way to work), we can see the ripples from our choice. Take for example my decision of where to go to college. Had I gone to UNK – there is no telling who I would have met, where I would have worked, if I would have ever met my wife, would I have embraced my faith the way I have, or countless other things. But my decision was to go to UNL and some of the ripples from this have been meeting my wife, embracing my faith, finding the kind of work I love, finding a good job, meeting a lot of my friends, becoming a member of my Parish, etc. I could go on all day with stuff that wouldn’t have happened if I had gone somewhere else. But if I look in hindsight, I might see that I would have saved some money and travel time visiting my parents and not see the ripples.
Hindsight is an interesting thing. I’ve made countless decisions in my life and I look back now on some of those and think, “Wow – that was dumb.” How much better off would I be had I done it this way or said that thing? I think back about mistakes I’ve made and wonder what I was thinking, if I was thinking at all. How can I be so absent-minded.
It is often said hindsight is 20/20, but I have come to the conclusion that this statement is false. Sure, looking back I can see the result of the choice I made clearly and what choice would have been better for me. But hindsight is not just perfect vision. It is often a magnified tunnel vision of the incident in question. For example, I recently made the decision to take a different route to work. It was a bad decision in hindsight because it ended up taking almost 10 minutes longer than going my regular route would have. But that hindsight does not consider the factors that could have been altered by my going another way. Had I gone the other way, would there be someone that didn’t make it through a light on time because they were one car further back? What about the lady that I let turn on to the street? Would she have made it on time? Was there a speed trap on that road? Did anyone have an accident? I don’t know any of these things and without researching every detail (which is impossible to do) its hard to look at the whole picture. So maybe hindsight is 20/20, but it is a very small scope you are looking through when you see that 20/20.
James Mapes once said “Assumptions are the death of possibilities.” If this is true, then assuming that hindsight is accurate causes the loss of all the possibilities that might have happened. Maybe by going that other way I let someone else get through the light and make it to work on time. Maybe I ruined someone’s day by slowing down traffic on the other route. Assuming that I should have gone the other way kills the possibility of me helping that lady and the possibility of that car that took my place in the traffic queue making it there faster. This is just a tiny example of how our hindsight doesn’t take the whole picture into account.
What gets really crazy is when you can use hindsight without the binoculars. What I mean is what if you look at events that happened and the effects that they have caused. While we can’t do this with decisions we didn’t make (like I can’t determine what would have happened had I gone the other way to work), we can see the ripples from our choice. Take for example my decision of where to go to college. Had I gone to UNK – there is no telling who I would have met, where I would have worked, if I would have ever met my wife, would I have embraced my faith the way I have, or countless other things. But my decision was to go to UNL and some of the ripples from this have been meeting my wife, embracing my faith, finding the kind of work I love, finding a good job, meeting a lot of my friends, becoming a member of my Parish, etc. I could go on all day with stuff that wouldn’t have happened if I had gone somewhere else. But if I look in hindsight, I might see that I would have saved some money and travel time visiting my parents and not see the ripples.
Those ripples are amazing, but what is even more amazing is looking at how it’s really God’s hand causing those ripples. He knew how the ripples would affect me and therefore he tried to lead me to the best ripples. Had I not made the right choice, He still would have led me with those ripples. So much like the pictures they used have in the Weekly Reader papers we got in grade school where the picture was blown up 100 times and only a small section was shown, I can’t use my ULTRA HINDSIGHT VISION to look at events and what I should have done differently. Sometimes the best vision is looking at the whole picture and appreciating what the Artist created and not paying attention to minute details.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that this:
Is part of this:
.jpg)
So always look at the whole picture and try to avoid your hindsight, because in looking behind, we don't see what we have now or what lies ahead.
And now, I'm back to my mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment