By Aimee Becker, COO Gaudiani Clinic
For someone like me who likes to get things right the first time, “hindsight is 20/20” has never been a particularly comforting phrase. I like to imagine I have some control over my life, that I can anticipate how something might go, and that my efforts have an impact on the outcome. In the over a decade I’ve spent working in the field of eating disorders, I have met quite a few like-minded folks on all sides of the struggle. I think there is something deeply human about this desire. Equally as human is the idea that we might be helpful when we tell someone that it is too much to expect of oneself to be able to predict or to control the future. This is not to say that we have no control over our future and no ability to imagine what it might look like, but in my experience, and with the help of a mentor, I have come around to the lovely “grey” thought that everything we do matters, and that sometimes things happen that reroute us or land us somewhere other than where we were headed. While I was struggling with my own eating disorder, I could not have known that I would recover, in spite of my determination. I wouldn’t have thought that I would spend my career in service of those who are struggling or who have struggled. I would not have had gratitude for my own journey and how it would uniquely equip me for my service to others while I was still on it. These are things that I can only feel looking back in hindsight. Dessa, one of my favorite musicians/writers, has a song that talks specifically about the expression good grief and distinguishing it from “bad” grief or plain old regular grief. She writes in her song aptly named, Good Grief, “They say there's good grief/But how can you tell it from the bad?/Maybe it's only in the fact/Good grief's the one that's in your past.”
I would still argue that it’s not always comforting, but perhaps there is something to the idea that the way one sees something changes as time goes on and that hindsight brings an awareness of that which might only be gathered when looking back.