How does “hindsight is 20/20” relate to now?

Last week, I wrote about National Preparedness Month. I shared an expert’s checklist for readiness in case of personal or community disaster. This week’s post is a follow-up to that.

As I was adding tweezers, duct tape, and Q-tips to my family’s first aid kit, I puzzled what I might be inadvertently neglecting out of ignorance or lack of foresight. This line of thought–what am I forgetting/missing–drove me into reflection.

Around this time last year, my family was eagerly anticipating the new decade. The year 2020 had seemed bright and new, full of promise. I recalled how my husband and I had anticipated an educational trip to Cuba, and how we had scheduled flights and hotels for our geographically distanced family so that we might all be together for several important family celebrations. Then Covid-19 hit, caught us all off-guard, and forced my family to reset and rethink our plans.  

When I wrote last week’s post, the phrase “hindsight is 20/20” popped into my head and leaped onto the page. I’ve been thinking about that expression ever since. Because I’m an admitted word nerd, I felt compelled to determine where this expression originated and how it had eased into our daily vocabulary.

In hindsight things are obvious that were not obvious from the outset; one is able to evaluate past choices more clearly than at the time of the choice (from en.Wiktionary.org).

Okay, wonderful definition, right? Yet it fails to address how “20/20” got tacked onto the expression. Next I turned to my all-time favorite resource Merriam-Webster, which did not disappoint me (www.merriam-webster.com):

Definition of twenty-twenty hindsight: the full knowledge and complete understanding that one has about an event only after it has happened. With 20/20 hindsight we now see where our strategy went wrong.

Obviously, the operative word in the above explanation is “see,” i.e. 20/20 denotes perfect vision. Not enough details. I kept digging and found this:

The expression hindsight is 20/20 is usually said in answer to an admonishment that the person should have known something would happen, or that the person made a bad decision (www.grammarist.com).

I don’t know about you, but the pandemic has indeed felt like an admonishment. A big fat “I told you so” kind of scolding, shaming us with the reality that we should have and could have been better prepared for the pandemic.  

All this aside, I found my cursory research still lacking.  I wanted to know who coined the term and why.  I climbed back down the rabbit holes… don’t you just love search engines?

One source I came upon speculated that the first incidence of the expression was in the Van Nuys (Cal.) News, Feb. 17, 1949, where “Most people’s hindsight is 20-20” was attributed to humorist Richard Armour” (www.freakonomics.com). 

Still another set of keystrokes unearthed a different claim: it was Billy Wilder, one of the greatest movie directors of all time that coined the phrase, “Hindsight is always 20/20” (www.independent-magazine.org).

Ultimately, I guess it doesn’t matter who gets full credit for coming up with this catchy phrase. It’s a given. We just can’t know how today’s actions will affect the events of tomorrow. One thing that all this poking around into “hindsight is 20/20” has taught me is the value of finding and listening to experts. With respect to the pandemic, perhaps there is only one thing we could have done to have improved this year’s outcome: Listen. Give importance to what experts advise. Put their ideas into action. 

I’m going back to the National Preparedness Month checklist and check it once more. I believe that if I take it seriously now, I won’t curse myself later. And, however it may have happened, in my mind the expression “hindsight is 20/20” has become irrevocably linked with the importance of being prepared–which is another way of saying: I’d rather be safe than sorry (I wonder who said that?).

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