The definition of hindsight: (Noun) Understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed.
Its use in a sentence: "With hindsight, I should never have gone."
Ain't that the truth. Show me someone who's never, with hindsight, rued their failure to employ foresight and I'll showyou a liar. And note how "should" sneaks in; it's a troublesome word, loaded with guilt and expectations that mostly can never been delivered. Should is best wiped from everyone's vocab.
An online graph shows the use of "hindsight" flatlined from the 1860s, when it came into use, until the 1940s, when it rocketed up in the manner of someone having a life-threatening blood pressure spike. Perhaps they even die.
The reason for that startling rise hopefully doesn't mean we have so much less foresight today than in the past, our need for hindsight is much greater. Perhaps it's all about our increasingly complex lives.
Surely, what has real value is having foresight without needing to go through the tedious and often painful process of first gaining hindsight. People with that skill must be life's winners, the folk who sail merrily through life picking off the paths they know not to venture down with the skill of a sharp shooter.
So far this year I've learned that I am not that person.
Actually, the first lesson in hindsight hit with a bang about eight hours prior to the moment most of us see in New Year amid celebrations.
In hindsight, that sweet pony I was trialling was, as one of a symphony of friends said after my spectacular crash, "too sharp" for me – or variations thereof. "Too active," was another version.
And worse, I knew that. I stood gazing at the pony in his paddock before the event thinking, "Hmmmm, don't think you're the pony for me . . . " and other such potentially useful thoughts which weren't followed by action.
And here's another myth: That people fall off horses. Generally, when someone fails to keep a horse between themselves and the ground, they don't fall but are sent flying before a rapid descent to Mother Earth. Gravity is quite something.
But never mind. My injuries could have been much, much worse. And, another blessing, while I mended in January, was that I had plenty to occupy my mind.
There were five of us on the organising team for a garden and house tour in Kaipara designed to raise money for a dementia unit in Maungaturoto. The 14-bed facility will increase the number of beds in Northland by 10 per cent.
None of us had undertaken such a project before so the process provided a dizzying number of opportunities for hindsight to rear her smug head.
Oddly, as we worked on the Dahlias for Dementia Garden & House Tour at full bore, I was too fragile to even pull a thread of kikuyu, thus our garden descended into the stuff of nightmares. A small blessing is seven escapee sheep. Their recent raid trimmed the growth considerably. I've put out water for them. Maybe they'll come again.
The tour, held last weekend, involved 20 properties belonging to such extraordinarily generous, kind, gifted and hard-working people that, as I write this, I feel a little teary.
Musos in a garden.
We're all a bit stuffed and emotional after reaching the end of our marathon which began early last year, so tears are okay. Even healthy. By the event's end it felt as if almost everyone in the community had played a part: helping, sponsoring, donating, cooking, growing and selling plants, buying tickets - and too many other good things to count.
The project, with all its flipping tedious lessons, resulted in the sale of about 700 tickets, remarkable for an event in our small rural town and 200 more than we'd hoped for. Even someone who lives in London heard about it then booked tickets and a flight.
We've yet to have a debrief, but it's a given it'll be all about the foresight we've gained from a steady and unrelenting stream of lessons in hindsight.
