Hindsight

There's a popular saying that goes "Hindsight is 20/20". Now I'm not absolutely sure what it means, but I'm guessing it refers to the fact that you will never really know whether a decision or move you made in the past will turn out to be a good one or bad one until the payoff occurs.

For instance, when the Chicago Bulls drafted this player named Michael Jordan back in 1985, they had no idea whether he would turn out to be a good or bad pick. He could have had a career-ending injury in his sophomore year and most of the pundits would call it a "bad pick". Or Jordan may not have been equipped with the desire to be a champion, and stopped improving his play after five seasons. It is extremely hard to predict whether any decision you make today will turn out to be a good one, five, ten years from now.

I have flashes when I regret some past decisions, then later on realize that they turned out to be good ones, and vice versa. For instance, I always wonder what would have happened to me had I not skipped a year of schooling in grade 6. I got along better with the guys back there, Darby, Gene & co. So if I had stayed behind, those would have probably developed into lifelong friendships. Yet had I not left, I wouldn't have met this entirely different batch of people who had a great influence on my life. Hindsight, they say is 20/20.

There is also this pattern when I initially think I made a good move, then it turns out to be bad, and I regret it. But years later I find out it actually had a good result. Now I wonder if some more years later I will find out it actually wasn't a good decision in the first place. Who knows? Or perhaps I credit too much impact on decisions made in the distant past, when in actuality, our destiny lies on the many little decisions we make in the present and future.