If you don't look behind you, you'll never see grandma giving you the bird.

Live your life by looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror, they say.


What freaking idiot wrote that quote.

Live your life by looking at both.
That's why they're in the same damn place, obviously.


We are all looking up the road ahead, of course, we have to. Otherwise we would walk into other people, and you might get groped, or hit by a car. So we look ahead.
And we can't go approaching the hypothetical 'speedbumps' and hills and issues, without looking back on the ones that are already behind us.

I get the point of the quote. Yes, look forward, not behind. Be positive. Blah blah blah. But seriously, it's misleading, and kinda of downright wrong.

If you forget the past, and everything in it, you'd need to re-learn how to tie your shoes everyday. So then we would all be wearing velcro shoes. And that's....well....
That would incredibly ugly.
(and all the people with velcro shoes just slumped down in front of their laptops.....)

Anyways. Back to my point. You can't NOT look behind you for so many reasons.

I mean, you could. But it would be highly unintelligent of you, you moron.

Why walk through a dark alley without looking of your shoulder? Crazy psycho killer man will dub you an easy target and *boom* off with your head.
Or, emotionally speaking, do you not want to learn from your mistakes? For example, the time you substituted super glue for the evasive little white bottle that came with your fake eyelashes?
Not at all the same thing. Didn't you feel like a complete ninny going back to the office with eyes like Tammy Fae?
Well, you should have.

In Life, like in a car, we are equipped with receptors to look in all directions. To see what stupid things we've done, and enjoy and gloat about the fantastic brilliant things.

Biggest, of course, is the windshield. Most important. Avoid the little old lady crossing the street at a painfully slow pace. I know it's hard, but you have to wait.

To each side, a little bit of what is directly behind us shows. Also helpful in case you didn't wait long enough for the old lady's weiner dog. You might want to go back and apologize for that.

And, in front of us, conveniently so, up above is a little bit of the path we left disappearing into the distance in the rearview mirror.
We don't always want to see ALL of our past, but it's good to see certain things, so we're given a large span in which to do so, which we must pick and choose what is worth looking at.

The little old lady flipping you off? Bad. (but kinda awesome at the same time)
The fact that the little yapper dog is okay? I guess for her, Good.



So, I take this opportunity to write my own quote, which is indeed wiser and more accurate than the original.
A little "Unraveled Wisdom", if you will.

Live your life by looking through the windshield, but don't ever forget the rearview mirror. Learn from past mistakes, thrive on past accomplishments, and always laugh when elderly people perform obscene gestures in your direction.



p.s. I have to look in my rear view mirror. So much of who I am, is who I loved and where I have been.
If I lost that, I would not be the woman that I am.