karmic balance
Life is understood backward but it is lived forward.
Simple statement-in fact so simple and obvious that I wonder why I didn’t coin it myself. In hindsight of course. It is like solving a crossword puzzle. The next day’s answer to the last puzzle makes me wonder how I could have missed an answer as simple as ‘room’… for ‘space’ or why I didn’t associate ‘soap’ with ‘long-running/ cleaner’.
Like some scripts are read from right to left, life reads front to back-and then to front. No amount of foresight can match the decisive, incisive power of hindsight. Hindsight has the last laugh-always! ‘I wish I had..’ can be the most honestly painful words one utters to oneself. The neighbour who has just watched her front door slam in the wind, with both sets of her keys safely inside goes on and on about how she had been absent-minded just for a second…how she could have/would have/should have used the stopper…that’s the modus operandi of hindsight you bet! Instead of thinking how best to unlock the door, hindsight gets us stranded thinking of that precise moment in the past when we let the door shut.
‘Proof-reading works best after publication’. Who said it? No doubt a much harried publisher who understood and lived life forward and backward respectively. On the other hand, the proof of the pudding is in the eating say experienced chefs. Or in the facial expression of the eater. The recipe of a chef’s pudding thus includes the memory of past grimaces and compliments alike.
Scrolling backward-forward, or upward-downward is the weave of life. It generates thought patterns and action designs as in a fabric which eventually wraps up a personality.
So often, like a page of magic painting comes into colours when painted with water, the past assumes meaning when coated with Time. What looked like a bolt out of the blue 7 years ago seems perfectly logical now. It simply had to happen. The mind has collected evidence, processed it in leisure and now sees it with impartial understanding. Like a long drawn court case.
In these times of instant gratification and rapid decision making, does hindsight matter? More than ever I guess. And ‘backward’ is not always eons away but can also be the moment which has just expired. And understanding life is not just about human behaviour, feelings or thoughts. Consider this:
Hindsight was developed as a tool to continuously record operations, allowing replay of process upsets in slow motion. With Hindsight, you can point a camera at a suspected problem area and walk away. After the next stoppage, scroll though the video and play the event in slow motion. After one or two stoppages, you will understand the root cause and can prevent future issues.
Thinking of it, cameras and closed circuit TVs in shopping malls, at traffic intersections, messages on mobiles, computers…anything recorded and saved, in the varied individual and collective memories are links to the past. From the modus operandi of a shoplifter to unraveling an act of terror, recorded evidence is a popular means of understanding the ‘back’ segments of life. With hopes of a better future.
On another plane, sciences such as archeology and anthropology and astronomy connect us to the past and provide us with elements to see the present picture of Life, just as the sciences of the future, stemming from the same present, give us a glimpse of what is to come. The true dimensions of the present emerge only from this loom-like shuffle between past and future. As a child I was told many a story with arresting morals by my grandmother-I remember being awe-struck by the finality attached to them. You did this and you got this…if you don’t remember doing this, you did it in your previous birth; if you don’t face the consequences of it now, well you will in your future births. A deft mix of imaginary hindsight and foresight to live safely in the present.
But wait… is the statement really single-dimensioned?…each word of it has twists and turns to it .Understanding life? like quicksilver, every moment slips by, taking with it a whole paraphernalia of variables-context, time, weather, mood…and of course Experience-that formidable punctuation mark of life. Is there a disconnect between looking at life in the rearview mirror and living it? Would history repeat itself if lessons from past events were absorbed and utilized for a better present and future? For some cultures, life just moves forward, in a linear way, the Past being unclaimed, abandoned baggage. To tribal/Oriental cultures for example, the baggage of the past recycles itself, claiming or reclaiming its dues with Time. As for life being lived forward, are there not those who seem to be happier dwelling in perpetual reverse gear? ‘the good old days..’ types! On the other hand are those who live life in leaps and bounds, kangaroo-styled. Today seems non-existent to them; they are ahead of the others, if not in any other way, at least in their thoughts and dream projects. There are those who live experiences like they eat junk food…blissfully unaware of what it does to them. There are those of course who would want a minute analysis of what could have given them that upset tummy…was it the extra dose of tea? The salted peanuts-those vicious little things? Or the pizza day before yesterday?...so damn difficult to pinpoint the culprit…the best is to forget it and live life forward-till the next ‘chanawala’ alluringly roasts his peanuts before their eyes…
Simple statement-in fact so simple and obvious that I wonder why I didn’t coin it myself. In hindsight of course. It is like solving a crossword puzzle. The next day’s answer to the last puzzle makes me wonder how I could have missed an answer as simple as ‘room’… for ‘space’ or why I didn’t associate ‘soap’ with ‘long-running/ cleaner’.
Like some scripts are read from right to left, life reads front to back-and then to front. No amount of foresight can match the decisive, incisive power of hindsight. Hindsight has the last laugh-always! ‘I wish I had..’ can be the most honestly painful words one utters to oneself. The neighbour who has just watched her front door slam in the wind, with both sets of her keys safely inside goes on and on about how she had been absent-minded just for a second…how she could have/would have/should have used the stopper…that’s the modus operandi of hindsight you bet! Instead of thinking how best to unlock the door, hindsight gets us stranded thinking of that precise moment in the past when we let the door shut.
‘Proof-reading works best after publication’. Who said it? No doubt a much harried publisher who understood and lived life forward and backward respectively. On the other hand, the proof of the pudding is in the eating say experienced chefs. Or in the facial expression of the eater. The recipe of a chef’s pudding thus includes the memory of past grimaces and compliments alike.
Scrolling backward-forward, or upward-downward is the weave of life. It generates thought patterns and action designs as in a fabric which eventually wraps up a personality.
So often, like a page of magic painting comes into colours when painted with water, the past assumes meaning when coated with Time. What looked like a bolt out of the blue 7 years ago seems perfectly logical now. It simply had to happen. The mind has collected evidence, processed it in leisure and now sees it with impartial understanding. Like a long drawn court case.
In these times of instant gratification and rapid decision making, does hindsight matter? More than ever I guess. And ‘backward’ is not always eons away but can also be the moment which has just expired. And understanding life is not just about human behaviour, feelings or thoughts. Consider this:
Hindsight was developed as a tool to continuously record operations, allowing replay of process upsets in slow motion. With Hindsight, you can point a camera at a suspected problem area and walk away. After the next stoppage, scroll though the video and play the event in slow motion. After one or two stoppages, you will understand the root cause and can prevent future issues.
Thinking of it, cameras and closed circuit TVs in shopping malls, at traffic intersections, messages on mobiles, computers…anything recorded and saved, in the varied individual and collective memories are links to the past. From the modus operandi of a shoplifter to unraveling an act of terror, recorded evidence is a popular means of understanding the ‘back’ segments of life. With hopes of a better future.
On another plane, sciences such as archeology and anthropology and astronomy connect us to the past and provide us with elements to see the present picture of Life, just as the sciences of the future, stemming from the same present, give us a glimpse of what is to come. The true dimensions of the present emerge only from this loom-like shuffle between past and future. As a child I was told many a story with arresting morals by my grandmother-I remember being awe-struck by the finality attached to them. You did this and you got this…if you don’t remember doing this, you did it in your previous birth; if you don’t face the consequences of it now, well you will in your future births. A deft mix of imaginary hindsight and foresight to live safely in the present.
But wait… is the statement really single-dimensioned?…each word of it has twists and turns to it .Understanding life? like quicksilver, every moment slips by, taking with it a whole paraphernalia of variables-context, time, weather, mood…and of course Experience-that formidable punctuation mark of life. Is there a disconnect between looking at life in the rearview mirror and living it? Would history repeat itself if lessons from past events were absorbed and utilized for a better present and future? For some cultures, life just moves forward, in a linear way, the Past being unclaimed, abandoned baggage. To tribal/Oriental cultures for example, the baggage of the past recycles itself, claiming or reclaiming its dues with Time. As for life being lived forward, are there not those who seem to be happier dwelling in perpetual reverse gear? ‘the good old days..’ types! On the other hand are those who live life in leaps and bounds, kangaroo-styled. Today seems non-existent to them; they are ahead of the others, if not in any other way, at least in their thoughts and dream projects. There are those who live experiences like they eat junk food…blissfully unaware of what it does to them. There are those of course who would want a minute analysis of what could have given them that upset tummy…was it the extra dose of tea? The salted peanuts-those vicious little things? Or the pizza day before yesterday?...so damn difficult to pinpoint the culprit…the best is to forget it and live life forward-till the next ‘chanawala’ alluringly roasts his peanuts before their eyes…
How often don’t we wish for that ‘another chance’ to do things right after hindsight sheds doleful light on our wrong methodologies. Yet at the right moment, here we go again on the same track, propelled by the same factors…
Ah! I find myself at a confusing crossroads…from peanuts to paleontology, Hindu myths to futuristic sciences, how many radiating routes are these? Or are they perhaps all loops of just the same expressway?
‘Life may or may not be understood backward, but it is lived forward by default’ declares a friend nonchalantly…
Ah! I find myself at a confusing crossroads…from peanuts to paleontology, Hindu myths to futuristic sciences, how many radiating routes are these? Or are they perhaps all loops of just the same expressway?
‘Life may or may not be understood backward, but it is lived forward by default’ declares a friend nonchalantly…
An eye –opener this! So, in spite of all the hair-splitting analyses and countless factual and fanciful accounts of the world’s wars, World War Nth could still happen, Naples could be buried Pompeii like under Vesuvius-and rebuilt, crosswords will dangle tantalizingly before me every morning if only to prove me my logical inadequacies…. Could the neighbour again let her door slam keylessly? Never mind…it is karmic balance you see!
posted by meera @ 8:59 PM
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