My super power: Hindsight

A common question asked among friends, and even mulled over in our own quiet time is often "if you had a super power, what would it be?" Well there are many fantastical and exciting answers to this question. Some silly, some very thought out and serious. I am a fan of both. That question isn't exactly what sparked this thought, but more the other way around. I'm not picky, I will run with it. I wish I had the power to know now, what I will know in the future about a situation. You are probably going well yes Sara we call that the ability to know the future. Well that is not entirely it, I'm going to be a little more specific than that. I want the ability of hindsight. It isn't that I want to know what is going to happen to me, I want the ability to look at my life, or a situation now and say; "Oh this is worth it. This is worth the aggravation because in the future it will cause these good things in my life, it will lead me here and open this door." I doubt there is anyone that does not know what I am talking about. If there is, well then that must be an individual with enough baggage to travel the world for the next 5 years.

There are many life events we drag our feet through the Beginning, roll down through Misery Hill, and finish off in the Valley of Self Sewn Depression. A few years after we step away from the situation and compare our current lives with our lives back then (and this is what we call hindsight!) we often think to ourselves, "Hmm... that wasn't that bad..actually it was pretty nice." You can consider it as an event that put you in a better spot at current, or an event that was not as bad in comparison to your present situation. In either way, to know then what you know now, would be invaluable. I find myself in situations, struggling to keep my head above water, to see the silver lining, to sniff the fresh air and forget the brimstone, but it is almost inhumanly possible. Just to throw yet another saying in, while being surprisingly accurate, when you are in those negative situations, you can't see the forest for (because of) the trees. Our minds seem almost incapable of extricating themselves from only perceiving current events. It is so easy and natural to get 'caught up' in whats directly in front of you, and missing out completely on the 'big picture.' If we always focused on the pain of the shot instead of the benefits of the vaccine, we would find ourselves to often be in a worse spot because of our fear.

I find when I am attempting to explain to people that things aren't as bad as they appear NOW, and that things will most certainly get better LATER. Spewing the stale word vomit that "Time heals all wounds (but can leave nasty scars) it feels pitifully inadequate for someone who is suffering. Sure you are trying your best to convey a message of hope, but you know it is falling on deaf ears. You know where they are, you've been there before. When you are in the thick of it, you don't want a weed whacker made of 'hope' and fairy dust. You want some sharp cold steel of logic. I am sorry to say, and it is somewhat out of my cynical personality to say so, the hope and fairy dust is the truer of the two, just much harder to grasp. When you have so much trouble on your plate you long for something concrete, something to rely on good, or bad. It takes an extremely strong person, and a person I would admire very much to be able to look past it all and say, I know that tomorrow will be a new day, and I will be a better person for these troubles. Even if I do not understand it now, I will persevere with faith through adversity.