Hindsight. (Irrelevant yet strangely powerful)

I lack the psychiatric and neurobiological credentials to properly explain how our brains use hindsight and confirmation bias to create a wildly inaccurate subjective reality. Suffice it to say that this nifty little mental parlor trick is the linchpin of nearly every facet of modern society. It ensures the smooth functioning of everything from casinos and bottle service to elected politicians and online dating. Our minds are designed with a critical flaw; we can only perceive the present, ponder the past yet cannot predict the future. However we are constantly forced to make decisions regarding the future and the only available data comes from events which have already occurred.



Now any finance jockey and/or degenerate gambler can tell you that past performance does not guarantee future results. Nature has done a pretty good job so far. I suppose evolution was far more concerned with us not jumping off cliffs and eating poisonous mushrooms rather than picking a good IPO or the right horse in the Third race at Churchill downs. Having the ability to predict the future would make for some very interesting TV, but I guess it would lead to pure chaos. Temporal mechanics is a messy subject.



Hindsight is a smug little son of a bitch which sits on the periphery of your mind and taunts you incessantly. It is the employer of every talking head on television and windbag at the bar fueling the endless choruses of "woulda coulda shoulda." Every single moment passing into the next is the result of an impossibly infinite array of probabilities collapsing into a single instance of actuality. Anything can happen, absolutely anything yet our little minds try to tell us that "I knew that was going to happen."



Is it a little insane that I am sitting here in the middle of the night railing against how my brain functions? 10 years ago tonight I have absolutely no idea what I was doing. If I knew what I knew now I would have bought all the right things, could have owned a piece of all the right companies and should have been drunk of of 60 year old scotch on a Saturday night instead of lamenting over the inefficiency of the human condition. But there's that asshole hindsight acting up again.



I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I would like to. History suggests that it will involve food, TV and a fair amount of driving. Hindsight, for all of it's evil, doesn't work alone. He has an equally sick partner in crime called hope, don't get me started on her. The two of them together make Madoff look like a girl scout. I think I finally understand why it's so important to enjoy the things you do while also taking the time to do the things you enjoy.



Lamenting over the things you could have done only paves the way for more self-destructive disassociation from reality and responsibility . Hindsight is as powerful a drug as they come and should only be used as a recreational tool.



The world owes you nothing so don't take it personally.