HindSight: Seeing from Behind

Looking back at your life through the lens of "what the hell was I thinking" is such an out of body experience. The foolishness you see on display cannot be you because it looks nothing like the image you've projected, but if not you, then who? Clearly, had you known then what you know now, circumstances would've been different, or so you would like to think. You become a spectator of the scenes that constitute your past as you take notes on every mistake you made and you wonder, why couldn't I see this then? Mistakes are rather crafty devices, consuming all that which you thought you knew and supplying you with a fresh batch of "you think you know but you have no idea." Why is clarity so difficult to hold....with a texture more slippery than the slopes of Colorado mountains. I concluded that at some point, in the midst of the behavior that resembles nothing that you expected yourself to do, you have learned who you really are. Life has a way of making you live what you say. It will, eventually, demand that you prove yourself. It is not enough to whisper sweet nothings of enlightened chants from an all knowing individual if you don't have the graded test to prove that you really do know what you say you do. So many things I thought I knew, life has proved to me that I really don't understand and only through the mishaps have I been able to see myself, for myself. I thought, I had it all figured out and everything(well almost everything) was the fault of others. I coined the phrase "I could be wrong but I'm probably right." Surely, with as much as I was able to recite verbally, I couldn't possibly be the one making a mistake. I can qoute everything from the Holy Bible to the Eleven Laws of God to the Tao Te Ching. Nonetheless, lip service is of a different caliber than active service. I am indeed equipped with an army of knowledge but having rhetoric as my sword has left me defeated, as the blades of talk are cheap. Being given space and time to reflect on the mess I'd made of my situation has led me to capture moments of misrepresentions that clash with the real me and the me I thought I was being. I'm not pleased with myself. Not at all happy with the contributions I made to the ending of what could've been an everlasting beginning. I see now but in the meantime, I've lost what I fought so hard for, wearing myself out, convinced I could handle the trenches. Not able to see that I had become a casualty of war having died somewhere on the battlefield. Still alive but ineffective due to my confusion and misconstrued perceptions. Deployed but mentally fixatated on the battle, unable to accept that I'm no longer beneficial to the cause. Dead to the reality, dead to every tactic I thought I knew. There is nothing worse than not being able to recognize when your moment has passed. However, when you do wake up, you are pressed to find out why you lost. The answers come but are hard to face because on the other side is a call to change along with a reflection unlike what you are used to seeing in the mirror of your egotistical self. So as I refocus and seek to map out all the gray areas that have become shades of crimson red, I desperately hope I can endure this process of transformation, as I would desire to do better next time. While I am glad to be growing and learning, I can't help but cringe from the pinch my heart feels everytime I consider how things might have gone had I been given the chance now that I had before. Then I wonder if I really even deserve to try again or if the greatest lesson to learn will be in losing what I wanted. I have no prior familiarity with regret but it seems to be the closet thing to me these days. I chose my head over my heart and now what was once two raging rivers meandering in different directions has become a steady, quiet stream of hurt and pain, running through a creek of disappointment. Hindsight is 20/20...however, it seems that in love, you only get one shot. Hopefully I'll have the courage to keep shooting, they say one day I should make it.