Memories are an imperfect thing. Eye witnesses to crimes are not reliable testimony. It is not hard to implant a false memory. A bad outcome does not always mean you made the wrong choice. Conversely, a good outcome does not always mean you made the right choice.
Memories are tainted with the context of where we are, right now. There have been experiments with mice showing that when they remember something, they are actually recreating the synapses of that memory. The irony is that the purest memory possible is a forgotten one, lost in an amnesiac’s brain. That’s assuming it’s not overwritten by newer memories.
If we take this to be true in people’s brains, which some people are starting to believe, that means that thinking back on an event, your impressions are clouded by the ultimate outcome. All of the telltale signs you can’t believe you didn’t see? Maybe they were never there. The risk is that by dwelling on a particular memory, continuously re-contextualizing it based on your perception of the outcome actually leeches out lessons that may not actually be relevant, and deaden the lessons one should take away.
Ultimately, one truly does not know what would have happened if they made a different choice, simply because they did not make that choice. Aggregate the experience, learn from it, and make better choices in the future.
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