Hindsight, Insight, Foresight

Back when I was still quite a bit more stuck about getting this writing thing properly going, as those following will know, I asked for some guidance from some oracle cards that a friend I met in England wrote. The cards helped me clarify what I was doing, and then I wrote about the purpose of this writing - to share my journey, the story of how I began to find my way, and then kept following it, learning as I went, and as I go, in case any of it resonates with anyone and could be of any benefit... and also for myself, to tell the stories that need to be told; and to honour my creativity - "a human necessity," as reminded by my cousin James, now one year departed, bless his soul.

And while I was at it, I also read in the guidebook for those cards, about Hindsight, Insight, and Foresight.

And I thought that these were very interesting concepts to be thinking of, especially while writing this story of there to here, then to now. I can see so much now in Hindsight that I couldn't see then. I can also see the Foresight that gave me clues back then of what was to come. And along the way there have been so many moments of Insight, moments of clarity, seeing, sensing, knowing, understanding. Important moments all.

Sometimes in the writing of it, it's hard to untangle the many cycles of the story, and sometimes it feels hard to explain things as they were then while knowing what I know now. But perhaps that doesn't matter in the end.

In the words of George Benson, from 20/20, a song on rotation in my childhood days, played often by my father...:

"If I knew back then what I know now

If I understood the what, when, why and how

Now it's clear to me

What I should have done

But hindsight is 20/20 vision"

And perhaps it is, but perhaps it isn't quite exactly 20/20 vision. Perhaps also time passing blurs; important facts, moments, pieces of the story are forgotten... And always of course, mine is just one perspective on it all. And as they say, there are three sides to every story... Mine, yours, and the truth...

But what is truth anyway...? And this, this is my story... Perhaps it doesn't really matter what I knew then, what I know now, how else it could be remembered; what matters is the journey, from there to here, from then to now, and the story...

And for that, Hindsight definitely helps, a new perspective even within my own. Learning coming from reflecting on then, from the perspective of now. And perhaps despite Hindsight, the road taken was the one needed, the lessons learnt the hard way perhaps sometimes in the end the best remembered. Or not...

As for Foresight, well it can guide us on our way forward, if we pay enough attention, find the meaning in the messages, the directions it encourages. 

And Insight? Well Insight is illuminating, enlightening. It can guide us to deeper experiences, deeper understanding, to a truth that must be true, as we know it deep inside.

Worth remembering, all three.