By Joe Byerly
It’s like looking down from a mountain top and seeing it all.
I know everything that’s going to happen to him. As he struggles through college algebra, I know he’s going to be just fine and earn his degree. As he wrestles with the frustration of missing a war, I know he’ll pay a dear price in the next one. I know he will lose his father at one of the worst possible times. I know he and his wife will struggle after almost a decade apart, but they’ll stay committed to each other. And I know about the disease that will eventually rob him of the very things he spent a lifetime nurturing—his mind and his memory. I know the date he was born, and I know the day he took his last breath.
Over the last year, I’ve been hard at work researching the life of a man born in 1923 who died two decades ago (you can learn more about the project here). I’ve pored over his letters, read his essays, and listened to the stories of those who knew him long ago. I’ve become familiar with details about his life at a level I don’t even have with the friends I speak to every week.
I can see it all. And sometimes, I wish I had even a fraction of that clarity in my own life.
How will it all play out for me?
One of the dangers of reading history is that it tempts us toward arrogance. We start to believe we would have done better—that we would have seen the warning signs, or acted with courage, or stood on the right side of things. But would we?
What would we have done if we were living in Germany in 1932, when someone came along promising hope and national renewal? Or in the American South in 1958, confronted with laws and customs that denied fellow citizens their basic rights, telling them where they could vote, drink, live, or simply exist?
And what is happening right now that future generations will look back on and shake their heads at us for? What are we letting unfold that will be our blemish—our blind spot—to the people of 2095? What will they say we failed to see?
It reminds me of something David McCullough wrote in History Matters: “History from the mountaintop may take in the large view, but it can also be a kind of looking down on the people of other times. We know so much they didn’t know, including, most importantly, how it came out.”
So this entire process, the tedious work of dissecting someone’s life with the gift of hindsight, has taught me something about my own. I need to give myself the same humility I’m learning to give the man who climbed the mountain before me. When I clearly see his missteps, his frustrations, his ignorance, I can’t judge him, because I know the path’s twists and turns. I know the whole story.
But what about our own lives? We torture ourselves over past decisions. We beat ourselves up over switchbacks we couldn’t have anticipated. We regret detours we never meant to take, and we wish we could undo mistakes that only make sense from a higher vantage point.
We never get the mountaintop view of our own stories. We react to the twists and turns in real time. And maybe that’s exactly why we should try to look back on our lives with the distance of an understanding historian —one who has patience for what we didn’t know, and grace for what we couldn’t yet see.
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Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
