Op/Ed

Looking forward at hindsight

A column by Karen Henslee

     “If I knew then what I know now...”
How many times did we hear that from our parents, and how many times have we said it to others?
     When exactly does that question enter our minds?
     Certainly not as teenagers.
     As teenagers, we can’t wait until we’re older when we can make our own decisions, oftentimes not realizing the decisions we make or choose not to make, as teenagers, will indeed come back to haunt us in later years.
     I was a lazy student. It wasn’t that I had so much trouble, really, things came pretty easily to me. I just simply did not want to apply myself. There were too many other things I’d rather be doing.
     And so, ninth through 11th grade, I just did what I needed to do to get by. By the time I was a senior, however, I thought I might like to wear one of those gold cords at graduation... so I took my homework home and finished it. I studied and took the tests. And I wore that gold cord at commencement.
I wonder how different things would have turned out had I made that decision as a freshman.
     “If I knew then what I know now.”
     There was a movie that came out quite a while ago, about an 80 year-old man who was lamenting his life a bit. He said that if he’d known he was going to live so long, he’d have taken better care of his teeth.
     That seems an odd thing, all things considered.
     But I imagine most dentists would agree. Toothcare was never a priority at my house as a kid. My dad once purchased a fancy toothpaste dispenser in an effort to motivate us to brush our teeth. That still didn’t work very well, and by the time I turned eight years old, my teeth were so decayed I had to have four teeth pulled. That’s a picture that is firmly lodged in my memory.
     “If I knew then what I know now.”
     It’s too bad we can’t really learn from the mistakes of others. We can watch the evening news programs and see what happens when people drink and drive. We click our tongues and say what a shame. And yet, some of “us” will think we are beyond the influence of alcohol or drugs, that we still have control. We get in a car and another tragedy occurs.
     The same could be said for the recent Cold Springs fire. Officials have said that the spread of the fire could have been drastically reduced had proper logging and salvage been done. Over the course of several years, it was discussed at agency meetings, and talked about between government personnel, “yes, we should do something... yes, we should get that all cleaned up... yes, it definitely has the potential to become a large fire.”
     Acknowledgement contains the word “knowledge.” And knowledge requires a decision. It requires action.
     Otherwise, it will just become another thing that should have been done... “If we knew then what we know now.”
     After all, everyone knows hindsight is 20-20.