Life can only be understood backwards: Life is tricky! It demands faith and belief even when it isn’t going as per plan. How can we move ahead when there are so many unknowns around us? At best, we have faith without tangibly seeing the results. How can we find this strength to keep moving forward and believe in the uncertainty of life? While we try to answer that question, let’s reflect on the meaning of life can only be understood backwards.
Life can only be understood backwards
We can’t predict life. All our plans, goals and hopes are indicators of where we want to go. But life has a plan of its own, it deifnes the challenges we face and tests our character and personality. In this journey of life, it is our responsibility to find inner strength to carry on and work through its challenges.
Sometimes, we won’t be able to understand the meaning of these challenges. At these times, we can reflect and find solace in these words – life can only be understood backwards. We may not be able to make sense of it all the time. But it’s ok, life is not to be understood, but to be lived. We tend to overanalyse and understand what things mean because it gives us comfort. But life doesn’t change with just this comfort. We have to act on this instead. And this is the beauty of being able to understand that life can only be understood backwards – live forwards, think ahead and just do what you need to. We don’t have to complicate life more than what it is.
- What lies behind us and what lies ahead us are tiny things compared to what lies within us
- Your time is limited, Stay Hungry Stay Foolish
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Søren_Kierkegaard
Life must be lived forwards
No one knows how exactly life is going to pan out. Life is complicated, fun, exciting and challenging. With all this complexity, if someone tells me that they can predict life – they are lying. Life can only be understood backwards! We can only make sense of the events that have created the present life. However, as our reality changes, these stories and narratives also change. It is a gross oversimplification if we assume that life can be predicted or created as per plan.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
– Søren Kierkegaard
The best thing we can do is to look backwards and view how our decisions have impacted our current lives. Life is too large and complicated to oversimplify into specific activities. Some things only make sense after a long time. That’s the central theme of this quote. The most common words that come to mind are introspection and self-reflection. Whether things go right or wrong, there’s a powerful value in introspection and fun in connecting various things that have brought us to where we are today.
Key themes on understanding life backwards
However, some other themes that help us understand the meaning of – Life can only be understood backwards:
- Connecting the dots: Sometimes it is too soon to think about what certain outcomes mean. It demands patience and faith to continue our efforts. Maybe at a certain point in time, it starts making sense. This is similar to what Steve Jobs calls – connecting the dots.
- Learning from the past: Our past is only an indicator and great feedback about how things work. Remembering the Lion King Quote – we can either run from the past or learn from it.
- Living in the moment: This is the most important point of the quote. We may have passionate dreams, but our life is in the moment. We can’t let our future pressures or past failures ruin our current moment. Ultimately, the present moment is all we have. If we don’t focus on it, life will move on. It will be such a waste to lose the present in the imagination of the future.
But we’re not here to understand life, are we? We are here to live life and be curious about it!
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Life often makes us unhappy, when things don’t work, when we really begin to doubt the positivity…But, then again, it’s the faith and earlier success and experiences that help us to move forward and, eventually we win.
I think one can’t move forward without looking backward , because, that is the source of all his wisdom and experience.
Very well-penned, Vinay, as always… :-)
Thank you Maniparna :). True, when things don’t work we begin to doubt our very existence too sometimes. You’ve pointed it aptly, our past experiences fill us with the necessary confidence to take life ahead and make the difference we want. It is impossible to move forward without looking backward. Probably the one differentiating question might be – how we see this past experience and whether it pushes us to achieve more and more..
Universe always has a broad thinking. It might be laughing there seeing us frustrated, as it knows we are on path which it has conspire for us…
We do not have control over what Universe is conspiring, so only thing which we have with us is to work hard and hope for the best to happen…
Thank you Mayuresh. True indeed, the path conspired for us. It seems like yesterday that I read the alchemist and every time I hear anything even related to it brings a smile on my face and keeps telling me that it is so universally true that one masterpiece of a book.
And true indeed, we need to work hard and do the best with what we have. The rest will find a way to find us :)
Hey Vinay, once in a depressed mood I twisted a quote -” the night is not as dark as it seems ” said Ruskjn Bond , I added , yeah, its darker.
But deep down I knew that Bond is right , Hidden by clouds ,night certainly has the moon – luminous and lovely.
Same here , looking forward things hardly make sense but on looking back ,one can most certainly see the pattern.
The trick to find a happy pattern on looking back is to accept the future with best intentions and react according to your best abilities to it.
Guess , we’ll leave wise and pleasant footprints then ….
Nice post … Just a little longer than my comment :D hope you’ll forgive me for ranting :)
He he he he :D :D .. Thank you Kokila, I have always appreciated longer comments, there is a lot more story to the comment which keeps us gripped too :). THat’s a really nice quote Kokila, life is never as scary as it appears to be, it either is a lot more scarier than that or a lot more neutral. But it is only our perception that makes a huge difference.
You said it, the trick is to keep doing our best with the limited resources we have and things are bound to work our way with time.
The first thing that comes to my mind is the reach the destination game of the comics where we used to look backwards from the destination that which road is leading to the starting point and then starting from the beginning of that road. That’s a very unique and effective way of bringing hope.
Naaice :).. I haven;t come across the destination game Deeshani. Now that you mention it, I am quite intrigued to pick that up. Indeed Deeshani, hope is a very powerful motivator and if used well, it can give us great results.