Was It Worth It? The Value of Anticipated Hindsight

Krystine I Batcho

Being in the moment can help us savor the good times and enhance their positive impact on us. But we can also become immersed in an experience and react without considering the possible future impacts of our responses. In our exuberance, we might overindulge, overspend, or overpromise. In our disappointment or anger, we might say or do hurtful things. It isn’t possible to know the future, but reflecting back, we can discover that the value of aspects of our past has changed, often substantially. Recalling a vacation or purchase, we might be surprised by how much the joy has faded or by how the pleasure now feels not worth the time, energy, or financial costs. In the same way, we might find that the argument or dispute that damaged a relationship no longer seems important enough to warrant the harm incurred. In many cases, we might not even remember what the disagreement was about.

Research has shown that memory can alter our perceptions of and feelings toward parts of our past. We remember some things as better than they were and other things as worse than they were. It isn’t completely clear why our impressions and emotional associations shift over time. Some changes can be attributed to the dynamics of memory. In general, memory is stronger for positive personal experiences than for negative ones, a feature of memory referred to as the rosy retrospective bias effect. Similarly, the fading-affect bias refers to the finding that the emotion associated with pleasant events in a person’s life persists longer than the effect associated with unpleasant events. Also, in general, events early (the primacy effect) and late (the recency effect) in an experience are more likely to be recalled than those in the middle.

As important, if not more so, are what parts of our past mean to us in our current life and for our future. Research has shown that how an event ended often influences the significance and emotion we attach to it. Even difficult or negative experiences can hold positive value if they led to a meaningful outcome or consequence (e.g., loss of a job leading to a better one or the end of one romantic relationship followed by a more ideal one). The likelihood that we will learn or benefit from an adverse experience depends upon more than its ending. It is not always clear when an “event” is over, and what is gained or lost from an experience can change over time. Unrequited love from our early teen years feels substantially different as we move on into adulthood and eventually into our senior years. Souvenirs from a former romantic relationship can evoke pleasant memories if the relationship ended well, but can elicit bitter or sad feelings if the relationship ended in a hostile way.

What can be learned from such a shifting appreciation of the segments of our life? Research supports the value of life review in enriching our understanding of the meaning of our life. Reflecting on the course of our life can strengthen our sense that we haven’t lived in vain; our life had and has a purpose. We come to understand how we have influenced the lives of others. But if we wait until we feel our remaining time is growing increasingly short, we might miss numerous opportunities for such insights to enrich our life and its impact on others as we continue to live. Cultivating the habit of retrospective valuation of our past choices and behaviors can enhance our life along the way. In a heated argument, reflecting on how we might assess our interaction retrospectively at some point in the future can help us pause just long enough to reconsider and make a better choice. Disappointment or frustration with a child’s performance or behavior can provoke critical, hurtful comments or reactions that we might regret later. Saying “sorry” can be helpful, but it doesn’t erase the emotional impact on a child who has internalized the negative feedback. While an adult can distinguish between criticism of an act from an evaluation of the person, a child is not as capable of appreciating such a distinction. Friends, lovers, and others might forgive our verbal or emotional assaults, but they cannot completely remove the hurt that endures. Sadly, negative feelings become part of who they are and of their overall memory of us.

Life doesn’t allow do-overs. In his song "A Lot of Things Different," Bill Anderson recounts common life regrets: “I wish I’d have spent more time with my dad when he was alive. Now I don’t have the chance.” Regrets can stem from big things and small. As Anderson sang: "She wanted to paint our bedroom yellow and trim it in blue and green, but I wouldn’t let her,” and "If I’d known that was going to be our last dance, I’d have told the band to play on and on and on and on and on.” The habit of considering our behavior from an imagined future can help us avoid future regrets. In "If Tomorrow Never Comes," Garth Brooks expresses an especially painful regret: “I’ve lost loved ones in my life who never knew how much I loved them. Now I live with the regret that my true feelings for them never were revealed.” We might reflect on Brooks’ resolution: “So I made a promise to myself to say each day how much she means to me ... to avoid that circumstance where there’s no second chance to tell her how I feel.”