THE PATH

The result is not the verdict

We judge a decision by how it turns out. The call that paid off was shrewd; the one that went wrong was a blunder – said as if the result had been there to read when the choice was made. And you do it to yourself most sharply of all: the decision that landed badly becomes the one you should have seen coming, the proof you got it wrong.

But you did not make the result. You made the choice, and then the world took its turn – and between your act and where it landed, a hundred things you could never command bore down on it. So the outcome is a poor witness to the choosing: it runs your decision together with all that befell it afterwards, and hands back only the sum. A careful judgement can fall badly; a careless one can come out well. Reading a decision from an outcome leaves you doing nothing more than trying to disentangle an impenetrable mass of contingencies.

So weigh the decision by what could be seen and done when you made it – that part was yours. Let the result teach what it can; it comes back as something to learn from, and a run of bad ones may tell you your reading was off. But one outcome is not the verdict on one choice. The clean answer you want will not come, because you never act at the end of things, where it could be seen; you act in the middle, and the worth of what you did keeps showing itself long after. By then the ground has moved and the next imperfect call is upon you.

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next: It couldn’t bear the weight →

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