The way it was....

I've been watching a show on HBO called "The Newsroom" and I've thoroughly enjoyed it - it's set about 18 months ago and it follows the story of a news anchor - Will - as he reclaims his professional integrity and begins to report news instead of pandering for ratings. The show has its critics (I acknowledge that it isn't perfect) but one of the funniest comments about the show that I've seen was a tweet that said something like this: "what Newsroom has taught us is that it's only really possible to do the news with integrity two years after the fact."

ZING!

Hindsight is 20/20. It's always easier to make righteous proclamations about PAST events than it is to make righteous decisions in present circumstances. We all fall prey to the myth making of "Well I Would Have" statements, comfortable in the totally baseless convictions of our conduct in hypothetical scenarios.

This kind of fanciful storytelling is all a part of our desire to go back and to change our own pasts, to relive days lived poorly or cherish precious moments gone too quickly. Even my son partakes in this practice - lately he has started telling me "I a baby" and then he proceeds to crawl on the floor or enact some other kind of toddler perceived "baby" behavior.

Hindsight isn't really 20/20 because none of us actually has objective perspective on ANYTHING, let alone our own personal lives. I sometimes daydream about how I could make things better if I could only go back and change something - a behavior, a planned trip, a permission given. And how much better it would be if only...

If only.

But I can't go back, and I was who I was back when (any when, really) and I probably always would have made the same choices that I did. Plus - it brings me no real comfort to "If only" myself; in actuality, looking back and wishing for something else only intensifies the pain of the present. The past is closed tightly, a series of doors that have seamlessly blended into the bedrock of the times gone and the only real option now is to open another door in front of me and step forward again.

There's only really hope in the way it WILL be, not in the way it was. Gareth will never be a baby again. Cliff will always be a felon. I will live with these painful memories forever. But tomorrow...

Well, tomorrow COULD be different.

Ice Cream w/Grandma? Sure!