I Already Knew What Was Going To Happen

Sure? Think it over. How many times have you heard this phrase on the lips of others or how many times have you regretted having done something after having experienced its disastrous consequences. Think of that girl who has been raped because she was walking home at night, that businessman who gave an inexperienced person a chance, the man or woman who hung up the clothes that ended up in the yard with a single clothespin per fault of the wind or the father-in-law who invests in the crazy business proposed by his son-in-law without studies. How did they not see what would happen?

We often do not realize that our judgments are a bit tricky and that they have the advantage of knowing the outcome. We can even come to think that the girl is partly to blame for what has happened to her because she already knew what was going to happen. If I already knew it, she sure knew it too, and she still did it? So in reality he exposed himself because he wanted to, then … he also asked for it. Guilty? Dumb? Confident? Or maybe: it wouldn’t have happened to me because before I go home alone, I ask for a taxi… If you go back alone, what happens happens. If so, I already knew. Wait a minute, let’s go back. The girl comes out of the disco and looks at the clock.

It’s too late and if she doesn’t get home soon her parents are going to kill her. He looks for a taxi but cannot find it. Then she observes that one of the boys who goes to class with her decides at that moment to go home and to her fortune she goes in the same direction: she has seen him in the neighborhood at some point and lives almost next door. He approaches him and suggests that they go together. The boy smiles and accepts. At first he is very nice and tries to seduce the girl.

But the girl ignores him, only thinks about getting home soon. When they reach his portal, he makes one last attempt to kiss her. Failing to do so, he stops being a gentleman and decides to stay home instead of accompanying her. She looks at the clock, sees that it is very late and that no taxi is going to pass there. Seeing that the street is well lit, he decides to hurry up and walk the remaining path. Even though it is night, he is not really afraid.

You are in a hurry, you are close to home, and the feeling of being in your neighborhood gives you security. Do you know how the story ends? Sure, you’ve read it before, but now I suppose the end seems less likely, or the girl’s behavior less reckless and illogical. However, she feels very guilty. Although he has experienced everything that has actually happened in the first person, his mind when making a judgment has simplified it.

Her memory only brings to her consciousness part of what has happened (curiously only that which made the end more likely): she has returned home alone when her parents and the newspapers have told her many times that the girls who return alone by the those things happen to them at night. The worst thing is that: to the traumatic event that she has lived, she will have to add: the burden of this own feeling of guilt, the blame of the people who love her and that of the rest of the world because EVERYONE KNEW ALREADY what was going to happen.

Thus, reflecting on the thread of this story, I believe that we will be much fairer with others and with ourselves if we are aware that, when making an assessment, our brain often ignores elements of reality that nevertheless if we take into account previously, when making a decision. Unfortunately, our mind does not remember that before the police found the murderer we had no idea who he was. Always the butler.