Hindsight, Blindsight

I ran into two quotes this morning, both talking about hindsight, and both dead wrong.

The first was from the "Culture Time: 20 Past Midnight" mailing list. It said this:

Hindsight is an exact science.


from Dali's The Persistence of Memory
Marcelo's Salvador Dali Page
The second was just as succinct, a comment attached to a submission to the Blender last month:
Hindsight is 20/20.

The thing is, both of these ignore the funhouse mirror that we use to reflect on the past. It's a mirror that makes old aches seem less painful, that puts a spectacular sparkle to yesterday's pleasures, that put the Good into the Good Old Days.

"The grass was always greener yesterday"-- I have to fight this myopia when it comes to relationships. Maybe romance was simpler when I was younger; maybe I've been through too much failed romance to come at a new relationship with the innocence and enthusiasm I once had. But it also means that I can find a depth and complexity in what I have now that wasn't available before. I shouldn't forget the old aches just because they don't ache so much anymore, but I can't let that get in the way of what I have now.

The Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun wrote that "The past resembles the future as water resembles water." We can see both with just about the same amount of clarity. The trick is finding the heart of the present.

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