It is only in hindsight that everyone is a genius...

Well duh! Looking back on something that happens in our life we can always understand why it happened. However, while said thing is happening we might as well be blond with an IQ of 80. Really, everything we learn is learned because we look back on something, analyze it, figure it out and commit it to memory.

This does not only apply to simple things like putting your hand on a hot stove but rather those life circumstances that put words in our mouth like, "well if only....that is the reason...if the bastard wouldn't have, then I wouldn't have....I wish I had not....I wish I had...." it all makes sense in hindsight. And there we are, GENIUS!

What one has to realize is that at any given moment we are not supposed to know what the hell we are doing. Think about it. If we knew what the right way to do something every time, would life not be the most boring piece of shit you ever could imagine? Yes we can KNOW why things HAPPENED in the past once we look at it from the present. However, what is the point if the other option is pure hell...knowing everything.

Look at who you are today. Look at who is around you and what circumstances have been lain by your feet. According to countless religions, philosophers, and psychologists, everything happened because it had to happen for you to be who you are and who you are supposed to become. This poses the question of why we have to analyze anything at all?

Nietzsche, one of the greatest (and yet I imagine fucked up) minds in history poses the idea of Eternal Recurrence. He states:


What if a demon crept up to you one day and said to you, "This life as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you and everything in the same series and sequence - and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and this same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hour glass of existence will be turned again and again - and you with it, you dust of dust!" - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a a tremendous moment in which you would have answered him, "You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine!" If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you, the question in all and everything: "do you want this again and again, times without number?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon all your actions. Or how well would you have to be disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than this eternal sanction and seal?




So essentially, if we were told we had to live our life again, the exact same way as we have before, would we be paralyzed with dread or euphoric with contentment?

It is the real genius who can say they would love to live their life exactly as it was before. It is the wise who would do everything in their power from that day forward of hearing from this "demon" to bring as much joy into their life as possible.

So as we will live our lives over and over again ("times without number"), what would we do differently? Not only how we would live life differently but how would we look at the pain we have gone through?

The Kabbalists use this analogy...what if someone said, "I will give you a million dollars for every hurdle you jump over in that race over there."
You would go out searching for hurdles! Well that is the way they look at problems. It is through the pain we become "rich" with wisdom and the ability to perceive real joy.

So maybe being deaf, dumb and blind as we trudge along through life ain't so bad. At least we know we might become millionaires.