Somehow, it always works like that. If I was able to live life in retrospect, I would do a much better job at it.
If we had some sort of time portal, where you could go back in time and fix things you did wrong, life would be so much easier.
But it doesn't work like that. Yes, it is so easy to look back on a situation and say, I shouldn't have done that, or, if only I did that instead, things would have turned out so differently.
And they may have. If you took a different road then the one you chose, your life may have been drastically different. But you'll never know. You can go your whole life looking back, and saying, what if. But whats the point of living life that way?
G-d blessed us with hindsight, so we could look back, regret our mistakes, and hopefully never do them again. We can not change the past, only make a better future.
He also gave us foresight. You can try your hardest to think before you do, try to make the right decision, so that when you travel down that road, you won't be constantly looking over your sholdier, wishing you took a left instead of a right. Regretting the decisions that you made.
Don't rely on hindsight. Think first.
Teshuva is making hindsight into foresight. Meaning you can change the past through teshuva. Since all the past is memories in your brain, changing your perspective on those memories changes the past as well. And as for the other people that remember you another way, do they really count at all anyway?
ReplyDeleteNo, I guess they don't. Only you and G-d counts.
ReplyDeleteBUT it is still very hard to change impressions. If people remember you as being a bully when you were little, even if you grow up to be a good decent preson, they will still remember that part of you.
But youre right, why should it matter?