Seen in hindsight, a travel challenge may prove to be a peak experience.
Image by Skeeze/Pixabay

Take a Fresh Look at 20/20 Hindsight

What’s your travel vision for 2020? Now that we’ve journeyed to a new decade, it’s tempting to focus forward. But don’t overlook the vision that’s always 20/20—hindsight.

Hindsight has a bad rep. No critic ever praised anyone for being “hindsightful.” If hindsight were a character, she’d be the younger sibling of over-achievers. As in, “Why can’t you be like your brother Foresight, always thinking ahead? Or your sister Insight, who brings home one A+ after another?”

Hindsight also gets characterized as Woulda, Shoulda, and Coulda—that terrible trio who show up too late to offer assistance, then stand around shaming us for mishaps we cannot undo.  Yet hindsight can help us debrief, and more.

Focus backward for a moment, and you’ll see how hindsight can be a travel hack.

In travel as in life, experience has a cost. Hindsight’s wisdom may not come cheap.
Image by Needpix

Travel Hack 1: See Hindsight as Signpost, not Setback.

In travel, mishaps abound: The wrong train. The faux pas. The theft or scam. The analog camera dropped into the scenic waterfall.

But hindsight, positioned farther along in the journey, knows something we don’t. Maybe the “wrong” train averts the strike that stalls the “right” train. Perhaps the faux pas breaks the ice, turning strangers into friends. The sting of dishonesty is salved by gratitude for countless times when honesty saved the day.

And the camera? Sometimes you must wait to see what develops.

Oh, I see: While clarity may not be “instamatic,” there’s much more to hindsight than meets the eye.

Travel Hack 2: Use Hindsight to Learn a Language.

The brain uses hindsight to improve language learning, better preparing us to travel.
Image by FotoEmotions/Pixabay

Hindsight is a surprisingly efficient teacher, good news for travelers who want to learn a second language. Numerous scientific studies show that a mechanism in the brain reacts in just 0.1 seconds to things that have resulted in us making errors in the past.

Errors like using inviter in French the same way “invite” is often used in the U.S. In France, you “invite” someone to dinner only if you are planning to pay.

Making mistakes in the language classroom may occasion chagrin, but the hindsight factor compensates by helping us avoid errors in the future—and in Michelin-starred restaurants.

Travel Hack 3: Read a Great Travel Memoir.

If only I’d known, we travelers fret, I would have done things differently. Yet it isn’t “things” we mean, but only that one little thing—the single, precipitating misstep or omission—which we then fixate on to the exclusion of everything that enriched our experience beforehand.

For some, that’s all hindsight is, a useless obsession, and many dictionaries support this negative reduction. I prefer Merriam-Webster’s more contemplative wording: “the perception of the nature of an event after it has happened.”

To discover how unflinching and invaluable hindsight can be, treat yourself to Fifty-Fifty: The Clarity of Hindsight (Strategic Book Publishing), my favorite travel memoir of 2019. The author, “Vagabond Lawyer” Julie L. Kessler, has traveled to 107 countries and counting.

You probably already know Kessler’s popular column, “The Traveling Life” in The San Francisco Examiner (#SFExaminer).
© Julie L. Kessler

In Fifty-Fifty, a must-read collection of 50 essays, Kessler beautifully demonstrates that hindsight is a many-faceted thing. Yes, it can be painful, but it can also be hilarious, practical, and empathetic.

Kessler’s travel memoir won accolades at the London, New York, and Paris Book Festivals. © Julie L. Kessler

In Kessler’s compelling prose, travel hindsight becomes profound, illuminating in ways that go beyond mere “20/20” corrective.

In one unforgettable chapter, the very act of misplacing a passport ushers Kessler into a whole new world of insight.  As she notes:

“Every single destination, even if unintended, holds the chance of something miraculous.”

I don’t want to spoil the revelatory moment that results—after nightfall, in the middle of nowhere, raw with grief and stranded among strangers—but the way Kessler finds the miracle within the mishap proves that sometimes nothing less than the rich context of hindsight can guide us onward.

Travel Hack 4: See the Future of Traveling to the Past.

Could time travel obviate hindsight altogether? According to unidentified sources at The Time Travel Mart, “We’ve been here since the beginning of time so no matter the era, we have just the thing to help you through your travels. Whenever you are, we’re already then.”

Made a mistake on life’s journey? Time travel offers a (re)vision of a perfect past.
Photo courtesy of 826LA

Wait—The Time Travel Mart?

This online store, which also has two brick-and-mortar locations in Los Angeles, sells what every time-travel ninja needs—a Pastport, (essential for entry to Pangaea),  time travel tickets, a Time Scouts Handbook, and a Victorian iPad that allows you to write your thoughts and then share them “with everyone who passes by.”

Don’t delay! Get your Pastport . . . yesterday!
Photo courtesy of 826LA

Will these products really blast you into the past? Only time will tell.  But they bode well for young people traveling into the future.

That’s because all proceeds help support free literacy programs at 826LA. If your 2020 travels are of the armchair variety, this travel hack’s for you. Visit The Time Travel Mart and help launch a young person’s journey of discovery into a bright future.

The Future of Hindsight

From my current perspective, I don’t know how 2020’s travels will lead to 20/20 hindsight. But thanks to travel hacks like activating the brain’s linguistic hindsight, following Kessler’s travels, and becoming a time-travel ninja, I’m unafraid to find out.

What has 20/20 hindsight revealed to you about past travels? How might this inform your travels in 2020?

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.