After The Fact

It is only after the fact do we realize what the right answer was, the decision we should’ve made. There is a lesson to be learned after the fact. It’s different from someone telling us that we’re wrong, or seeing an X beside a question that we got incorrect on a test or a quiz. It’s the type of learning experience where we have to admit to ourselves that we were wrong, because if we didn’t, we would go about our lives with something that can’t be used or that would cause problems later down the road.

For example, if we build or install something that isn’t leveled, could we live with it knowing that it’s crooked? If something is assembled incorrectly or in the wrong way, how could it be functional or of use to us? In order to fix it, we’d have to start over or find where the mistake was. What we thought was correct was actually incongruent to the outcome we expected–something we could only spot after the fact.

Sometimes we look at our mistakes as something we should’ve already known rather than something that is to be learned after the fact. But we should keep in mind that the right answers to the things we were taught might’ve been learned after the fact by someone else.