Episode 24: If Hindsight Isn’t Twenty-Twenty

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be today. Our poem and episode this week dive into the common phrase “hindsight is twenty-twenty,” asking us to think about looking back with a bit more nuance. For example, seeing an experience more clearly in retrospect shouldn’t diminish how it was felt at the time, particularly how these feelings are remembered in the body and soul (when our mind tends to intellectualize memory). The poem is written with a sonnet in mind, which usually follows fourteen lines (three of four and one of two), ten syllables per line, abab rhyme, and iambic pentameter (da-DUM, da-DUM). Our poem includes fourteen lines with ten syllables each, but doesn’t rhyme and doesn’t include a clear meter. Sonnets are often love poems about desire, but here, it’s about the desire to see that looking back at anything thoughtfully is messier than twenty-twenty, while no less meaningful. 

I’ll share it with you now:

Nearly always, we see things more clearly

after they’ve happened. But why do we see 

best when looking behind us, each other?

Backward in time? Never ahead, forward?

What if hindsight isn’t twenty-twenty?

Never forget how that year wounded us.

So it is more like my soft eyes without

glasses or contacts—negative sevens.

We’ve more view variety than we think—

not just body from brain, eyeballs from lens. 

Today-only clarity doesn’t curse. 

But careful, it can gaslight a cut soul.

What the soul-bone remembers—felt & feels

isn’t untrue or unravelling, now. 

Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?