There is no piece of technology more powerful than hindsight. It runs on zero electricity, costs nothing, and yet it convinces people every day that they would have been a genius if only the universe had followed their updated instructions.
Everyone believes they would change something about their past. Different spouse. Different career. Different haircut in 2003 when we all collectively lost our minds and trusted frosted tips. The human brain is convinced that the past was a rough draft, and if given a red pen, we would turn our lives into a Pulitzer winner.
But notice how selective regret is. Nobody says, “I wish I had bought less Bitcoin in 2012.” Nobody regrets that one time they took the risk and it worked. Regret is almost always retrofitted around outcomes we now understand, not decisions we made with the information we had.
We rewrite history like a streaming service edits controversial episodes. We remove context. We forget uncertainty. We delete fear. And then we judge our former selves as if they were reckless interns instead of people making decisions under pressure, with incomplete data, surrounded by idiots, including themselves.
This obsession with changing the past has exploded in the modern era because social media weaponized comparison. We don’t just imagine better versions of our own lives, we now binge-watch other people’s highlight reels and conclude we were robbed by fate. The algorithm quietly whispers, “You could have been this… if only.”
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