Yesterday I drove my son to work and, since we arrived early, we sat in the car and chatted. I’m not sure how we got onto the topic, but quite quickly, we began discussing the idea that the things people do are always the best they can do given who they are, what they know, and the circumstances they find themselves in.

To be honest, I’ve always been somewhat dismissive of the idea. I mean, really? Even when I goof up, I’m doing my best? And if everything we do is always our best on every occasion, then, so what? What more is there to discuss? Our conversation in the car, however, went in a direction I hadn’t considered before, and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about my son’s perspective.

An early topic we explored was how misleading hindsight can be. My son explained that he often reflects on past events and thinks about what he could do differently next time to make things better, but he insisted that, at that previous time, the decision he made was the best one he could have made.

It’s easy to look back over some past happening and spot various things that could have been different. You’re always looking back, though, from where you are now with all the learnings and experiences you have accumulated. You’re not reviewing that past situation from the perspective of the you you were then. In Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) fabulous book Thinking, Fast and Slow, he explains that “Memories are all we get to keep from our experience of living, and the only perspective that we can adopt as we think about our lives is therefore that of the remembering self.”

In terms of Kahneman’s (2011) reasoning,........

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