Hindsight

The proverbial expression that likewise indicates the "ability to judge an event or a situation only afterwards, when it is too late and completely useless."

As usual, the meaning of a term looked up on the internet is very clear. But I wonder one thing: what if, instead of using "hindsight", I expressed something before it happened?

The answer seems obvious to anyone who thinks about it for a moment. The answer is: you're crazy!

In today's world, what is said before something happens is declared madness; what you state afterwards, with a simple "I knew it", is declared hindsight.

So when are you supposed to say something?

In my opinion we live in a time so short that people run without knowing where they are going. No one enjoys anything anymore. Everyone busy with their To Do List, everyone stuck in their schedules, with 24 hours never being enough. Time is so tight that even the poor have no time to earn.

Ecclesiastes was right, who can say he was wrong; times are still the same, but above all, who can tell him that what he summed up with the word vanity is still today's problem. Ecclesiastes: a madman.

Oh yes, because I realise that either you are crazy or you are predictable. I read or heard somewhere that a philosopher compared past and future with the clear intention of opening people's eyes to the present. But if the present is already past, as this philosopher claimed, then I ask myself: either you show yourself to be crazy, or you end up being predictable.

So, better crazy or predictable?

There are those who choose to anticipate something based on their own ideas and bet on a victory or a defeat, and there are those who let go of their human thoughts and aim straight for the knowledge of the Most High. With this I am saying that you want to, and can, be extremely crazy.

Have you never said that you either do something well or you don't do it at all?

I chose to be crazy a few years ago, in 2014, when I chose to change my life and, like a salmon, fight against the current to go and lay its eggs. I don't know if you know the struggles of this fish fighting its way up the river, certainly no easy task, considering that on the final stretch there is always a bear ready to eat you.

I assure you the water flowing against you is cold, and the bears that want to eat you number one, two, three a day when the sun is smiling at you.

So extreme madness is when you not only stop reasoning in a human way but also start believing that what you receive... (yes, because if I wrote "what you hear" they would lock me up)... is an alert for "tomorrow".

Whoa, what is this? An alert, a receiving, a tomorrow. Do you become a fortune-teller? Nooo, these terms have been so abused, as if I said God and they asked me which god, Jesus' or Muhammad's. (I am not saying something heretical: once a very "devout" person told me it was the same god, and I asked her whether that made us relatives of the Arabs. Oh well, catechism stuff.)

If today you had this intention of madness, know that you'll find everything in a single manual, but it must be reread constantly, because very often you don't remember what you've read; dusting it off reopens the madness and you go back to discovering a near "tomorrow" (if I wrote "near future" I'd confuse you, making you think of verb tenses or, again, of fortune-tellers).

There is a reality, outside your imagination as you form an opinion on what you're reading, but you have to discover it yourself.

Madness is "commonly, any form of alteration, permanent or temporary, of the mental faculties" (meaning looked up on Google), but it is also discovering what lies behind a thing, a fact; whereas predictable, and so banal, is whoever wastes time kneading discussions about facts already known.

I grew up knowing that at Teano Garibaldi and Napoleon shook hands, and you can't imagine how much that stuck with me. True, it's a historical fact, but about what came before or after that handshake, I know nothing. Fine, the history books say so, but to me that handshake makes me think of Teano, just as D makes me think of Domodossola.

I wasn't there that day; the books tell us it went like that, I don't know what it changed, because even if it was written afterwards, it may have gone better or worse than what was written. Who knows? Only the madness of wanting to believe it, or being predictable and finding the results in this life.

There is a best seller they say is the most read book, but the least used as a practical manual of madness, which everyone nonetheless pulls out with hindsight.

With hindsight came the mark of the devil, Satan, hell, the apocalypse, Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar. Everyone being predictable with these park-bench topics, where saying that things are not going well is predictable. But how many, in that same little park, have stood up on the bench (careful not to fall or break it) and shouted to change your life because what is being done is wrong?

I didn't do it, I'm not stupid, but I knew it would end this way, with them locking me up for madness.

Irony aside, what God, the Lord and Father of us children ready to hear His voice again and again through His Word, contained in those many Books of life that have shaped history and change our lives... well, we do understand what is being unleashed over our heads.

Those Books are clear because they state that it is not a battle against flesh and blood but against "spirits" (call them what you like: entities, energies, spirituality, principalities, powers, Satan) over our heads. Obviously I've brought up a well-known topic from those Books, but there is much more hidden in those words that gives "madness".

In the last few days these words were said to me: with hindsight it's easy to say things are like this; I respect your ideas, but we have to decide and understand, there is a law and it must be respected.

I was in a conversation with two colleagues who know my madness, and when a third colleague joined in, this sentence was addressed to me after hearing me state certain things.

Our life is like the salmon: you swim up the current as if out of madness, you reach the top convinced you've made it, and there is always a bear ready to catch you.

In madness you are never at peace; in hindsight you smile and think that this moment has passed too and you are ready for another madness, because the "spirits" that move the "air" over your head will never stop making themselves felt when a new scam is around the corner.

If you've reached the end of what I've written, you have a bit of madness in you, but you still have to find out whether you are predictable or not.

In the near future we'll all be in Cryptocurrencies, so why not write a cryptic article, right?

Do not fool yourselves. If any of you think that you are wise by this world's standards, you should become a fool, in order to be really wise. For what this world considers to be wisdom is nonsense in God's sight. As the *scripture says, "God traps the wise in their cleverness"; and another scripture says, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are worthless." No one, then, should boast about what human beings can do. Actually everything belongs to you: Paul, Apollos, and Peter; this world, life and death, the present and the future; all of these are yours, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

1 Corinthians 3:18-23

One thing is not obvious to tell you: the madness I am referring to is not of this world, but comes from knowledge, a knowledge that is not ours but God's, who reveals what will be in a future time to those who choose to be His children by accepting baptism in Christ, acknowledging His resurrection and walking, always keeping an attentive ear to what He wants to tell us.

The world is full of false prophets; there is no man who chats with God constantly. God reveals, but He is not there unveiling His purposes every moment. Stay away from those who, every moment, every day, know God's intentions. That knowledge is earthly and declares obvious things, or things that are obvious given what is already known about a revelation.

Wisdom is knowing God; understanding is recognising evil.