I removed “I told you so” from my vocabulary the last time I said it in 2010. It was to myself. It doesn’t feel good and it doesn’t help you.
It wasn’t so much that I did something wrong, or that they did something wrong, but life happened and it happened the absolute last way I wanted it to go.
At the end, all I was left with was “I told you so.” I couldn’t really think of anything else to tell myself or any way to get back on my feet. I tried everything I could and I could not avoid a turn in life.
I think, I eventually got twisted in that turn. I wouldn’t start unwinding myself until maybe my second year at Sinclair. I kept trying to make judgements about myself and my behavior.
Maybe, an observation was wrong. Maybe, I could have predicted something more accurately. Maybe, I deserved it. Maybe, this is just how my life is supposed to be. Eventually, maybe took me over.
In life, there’s no living in maybes. There’s “yes,” there’s “no” and there’s “I don’t know.” That’s definitely not maybe.
Maybe is your obsession of inclination. Every maybe you have up in your head can hold back your experiences of all the “yes’s” and “no’s” you do have in life to go and build off.
You can do more with evaluating yourself through those “yes’s” and “no’s” than speculating life’s opportunities away. You’ll get stuck in your head–then stuck in your life.
We make judgements all the time, whether we want to or not–but we can do more than that. There’s a point where judgement turns into a net negative for everyone. That’s when everyone loses.
Millennials, like every generation, will have a lot of moments where it might feel good to employ that rhetoric.
I don’t have a strong opinion on the Millennial generation. All I have are observations. I’m not capable of seeing the future with any profound accuracy, so history will judge Millennials. I don’t want to judge them. I want to help them and any other generation.
Often, when we want to help someone, the ego intervenes. Perhaps it’s because we’re not great at doing something for no perceived benefit to ourselves; we need something to tell us we’re good for it.
This can really separate our good intentions from good outcomes. We need good outcomes.
“I told you so,” is really a type of “maybe.” It’s asking for affirmation. Maybe you should have listened, trusted, thought different and so on. It’s not a great start for people that are down, no need to kick them.
Not that there’s no merit for some cases in saying it, if someone is really disillusioned and needs some honesty. It’s just that more often than not, there exists a pathway for people that truly desire to help those in their time of need to do so–without damaging crucial relationships.
I only want to stress the importance of this pathway because while we are under stress we are more likely to take risks from emotional influences. We know it’s not worth it, or that we don’t want to say something.
Sometimes, we end up doing it anyway. That has consequences that we can avoid or minimizing while maximizing our impact in the lives of the ones we care for most.
I believe that’s what we all want, even when we get tangled somewhere between our ideals and realities.
Barton Kleen
Executive Editor