Second Glance, Second Chance

Look a while longer and what do you see? Should we always trust, or be able to trust, our initial judgments of things? Pulling out onto the roadway recently and I didn’t just see what I saw out of my rear view mirror, I saw a vision of a second chance.

It wasn’t that I had cut my entrance into traffic fine, but it was a case that looking through the rear view mirror is synonymous for the practice of reflection in life; the second glance facilitating the second chance.

When we take the time to look a while longer, even a split second longer, we’re not surprised to find our initial perceptions can actually be found wrong. Things are not always as they appear.

Taking a second look is often about taking up a second chance at things--a revising of our stance, plans and positions on things, which in all reality could have been hatched early or brashly.

What triggers this predilection? Is it a lack of self-trust or of God searching us (via our consciences or our conscious/sub-conscious minds) on the matter? Whether it’s the former or the latter we’re being honest with ourselves in checking, for instinct alone has its limits and has brought many situations down.

And what do we do with the re-consideration of our initial impressions?

Checking our initial decisions on the roadways through confirmatory glances through rear view mirrors is not only a key safety behaviour--a check over the veracity of the initial decision to ensure we’re not rear-ended--it’s also a way to see life from a different dimension i.e. to see what is behind us; that which is in the past, but on the roadway, still part of our present.

We see here the relevance of past events, decisions and circumstances at play, potentially, with our present and our future. But at present we have time to re-assess. But this time, if it’s really required, will disappear before too long.

Perhaps it’s a situation where we’ve not been entirely honest and forthcoming with information or our stance on things. It may come back to bite us if we don’t take our opportunity to set it straight while we have this window to the second chance.

Looking behind us is also a skill of life that not many of us are apt at doing, as this day and age calls for so much forward-looking toward dreams, goals, acquisitions and the like.

We get a different viewpoint when looking back; we get second chances to put wrongs right; we learn things and how to do them better next time.

We can hence be seen as wise and are models for wisdom. For wisdom is not always about being right, but it is about being true; true to life, true to ourselves, and finally, true in all our relationships and life contexts.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.