Knowing the Knock Before the Door Knocks

The ability to see events before it's too late

There is something I always tell my friends: Do not look at your life and the serious events in it after the autopsy. Because this approach is like looking back and talking as if you knew everything from the beginning, once it's all over.

During my student years, I used to love when my professors described certain syndromes with incredible beauty and then ended by saying, 'the diagnosis is made during autopsy.' After an event is over, going back and analyzing the beginning through tests is easy. But what is truly remarkable is that we often see the same pattern in life.

Most of the time, an event happens, everything is over and resolved, and then we look back and make comments. This after-the-fact know-it-all attitude doesn’t really make sense. As the saying goes: After the door knocks, anyone can open it. The skill is knowing the door will knock before it does.

For this reason, when approaching events, one must be able to foresee the future well, just like a chess player who can see several moves ahead. Instead of making autopsy-like interpretations after everything is finished, the right approach is to take the correct precautions from the very beginning and adopt a preventive mindset.

Mastery in life does not lie in explaining what has already happened, but in evaluating things correctly before anything happens.