Hindsight is 20/20

This post introduces a new blog category — Hindsight is 20/20.

Valuing hindsight stems rightly from an appreciation that if we can identify what would have either prevented or made us better prepared to weather prior events, we can better prepare for future events.

https://strategictreasurer.com/hindsight-is-not-20-20/

For us octogenarians+, life is increasingly viewed through a rearview mirror. The lens of wisdom and knowledge gained over many years shape the backward-looking analysis of hindsight. Such revelations are opportunities for self-awareness. Past understandings and experiences can be deeply embedded in our psyche shaping our present lives and relationships. “…we look back at times and reflect and examine.  Such is introspection and learning.  We try to get a different angle on the road taken.¹Ashley Bullock, PhDhttps://modern-minds.com/we-finally-get-it-hindsight-is-2020/
Hindsight can be perilous journey, producing “If had only known then what I know now..” laments.
Regret, remorse, grief, pain and guilt may occur. On the other hand, hindsight can be analogous to a positive side of regret:

In his book “The Power of Regret” the writer Daniel Pink argues that regret is an unavoidable fact of life and that it should not be thought of as something negative and shameful, but rather embraced as something helpful and instructive. What we regret, he says, can teach us about who we are. It helps to reveal what we want, what we fear, what truly matters to us and what doesn’t. It is an emotion that can help us tune our moral compasses, strengthen our values and keep us from repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

My goal is for “hindsight-insights” to become “tsunami stones” for our daily life.

Tsunami Stones

In 2011, the northeastern coast of Japan suffered from a chain reaction of related disasters that caused tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced residents with no home to return to. First, the most powerful earthquake Japan has experienced in recorded history (magnitude 9.0-9.1) occurred in the Pacific off the coast of Japan. This earthquake triggered a massive tsunami, which not only razed a large area to the ground, but also led to the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Residents in the affected coastal towns had only minutes of warning before the tsunami struck. However, in the tiny coastal village of Aneyoshi, there was no destruction when the wave hit. Why? After a destructive tsunami in the late nineteenth century and another in the 1930s, the residents of Aneyoshi relocated their village to higher ground, carved a message on a stone and placed it at the highest point the waves had hit: “Do not build any homes below this point!”
Similar “tsunami stones” are scattered generously across the northeastern Japanese coastline. Not all of them say exactly the same thing, but their purpose is clear: to warn future generations of the very real danger of tsunamis. The sense of risk, however, has faded with the passage of time, and Aneyoshi is one of only a handful of villages that have continued to heed the warnings generations later.
It’s easy at times to look back through our own lives, remember the disasters we ourselves have lived through and remain wary of the things we’ve seen cause problems. It’s less easy to look back further, pay attention to history and heed the warnings of prior generations.

https://strategictreasurer.com/hindsight-is-not-20-20/

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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  Ashley Bullock, PhDhttps://modern-minds.com/we-finally-get-it-hindsight-is-2020/