I imagine you have either said or heard someone say, “I wouldn’t have done that.“

Perhaps you were right; you wouldn’t have.

I have a question, though.

Were you ever in the same situation as the person who took the wrong step?

Perhaps the circumstance under scrutiny is a catastrophic financial loss due to a risky investment.

Another example: a married person cheats on their spouse with a notorious new, young partner.

Finally, you read about a Jewish man who chose to stay in Germany before the worst of what the Nazis were capable of.

Again, the comment offered by many is, “I wouldn’t have done that.” Moreover, along with it comes the judgment of those who made a choice we assert was wrong, foolish, or immoral.

How do we maintain certainty — holding a position of no doubt about what we would do — if we never lived the experience?

Take the Holocaust for just a moment more. We look back on this epoch as history, and most of us possess only surface knowledge from school, movies, and books. Those who endured the cataclysm could not find a description of the upcoming horror in textbooks not yet written.

Almost no one at the time thought the most civilized nation in the world could be the birthplace of the unspeakable.  Germany was a place of scientific discovery, superb musicians, and towering visual artists. The genocidal murder of six million was planned there, with the intent of killing still more.

Or consider this. An old relative who lived as one of the homeless left a nephew $600,000, though he had been cold to her for years. The other surviving family members, some of whom showed her kindness, received nothing.

What would you have done if you were the beneficiary of the windfall? What would you have done if you were one of those who received nothing?

Keep reading, and I will describe what happened in one such family.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” and similar beliefs offer an imaginary certainty. Ancient Greek philosophers, however, recognized that one must be tested to know oneself.

Certainty of how we would face the future is related to control. The fabrication of a desirable future supports a positive self-image of moral rectitude. Some who assume they would act well envision personal nobility under pressure. They resist temptation and make sacrifices to help others.

Some do not think the problem through, but quickly default to the belief in their basic decency. They are therefore less troubled than they might otherwise be. This is accomplished by telescoping their vision of themselves to a place where they possess mastery, resist desire, display bravery, or show uncommon generosity.

Are they moral men and women, or people of high standards they have not met except in their mirror?

Conviction in our responses to hypothetical questions predicts command — the capacity to bend conditions when needed and impact the world rather than becoming its plaything. Of course, the only way anyone can discover tomorrow’s reality is to face a situation that is neither part of our past nor our present.

Put another way, we have made sure our magic mirror tells us we are the fairest of them all, or, at least, better and wiser than the person who made the mistake.

This is comforting. To avoid unsettling ourselves, there is value in believing a few things for which we have limited evidence or experience.

To manage our lives and protect ourselves, we think we can handle most of what might come our way.

And yet, there is much we don’t fathom, and much disappointment never happens. Resting easy is a decent strategy. Most of us sleep better that way.

I am no enemy of optimism and try not to claim a heroism I have not earned. Here is an incomplete list of things about which I have some knowledge and others about which I do not. Note the incompleteness of my lived experience:

• I am not a woman and do not claim to have full comprehension of the many internal and external aspects of life encountered by women.
• I would say the same of gay men, since I am not gay.
• I treated a majority of women.
• I have endured surgical mistakes.
• I listened to thousands of stories in the course of my career.
• I am a fine storyteller, omitting details that might identify former patients.
• I was raised by a mother of broken emotions and a father who worked multiple jobs outside the home.
• Acquaintance with aging has taught me about age. I tolerate significant and continuing chronic pain.
• I enjoy the Midwest and the East Coast and have lived in both, but have spent no time living in the South.
• I have visited several foreign countries, but not resided in any of them.
• I love to laugh, I laughed with many of my clients, and have a wonderful time with lifelong friends, one of whom I met in 5th grade.
• I have loved, and I have lost. Love is better when reciprocated with enthusiasm.
• Most of my patients were Christian. Though I claim no faith, religion enabled some of them to lead better (and sometimes remarkable) lives. I also witnessed this magic elsewhere, including within the Orthodox Jewish community. The faithful celebrate life’s joys and search for the light, especially in times of darkness.
• I have never faced my death, though I am comfortable talking about mortality as an abstraction.
• I served as an expert witness and underwent cross-examination multiple times.
• I have never been divorced, but treated a multitude of souls who were.
• I’d have liked to have been in the body of Willie Mays for one game in the prime of his baseball career, just to enjoy what it was like.
• I was consulted by the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team as a sports psychologist for one season. They didn’t want me back.
• I was the beneficiary of my aunt’s $600,000 estate. Upon learning this, my wife and I decided to divide the total equally among my two brothers, two cousins, and myself.

We were the nieces and nephews of my aunt. I gave a small portion to the Zeolite Scholarship Fund, a philanthropy that I began with my old high school buddies.

Despite my values, I cannot promise or foresee how I will behave in many situations and can only guess what the future will evoke in me.

Memory tells me how I felt and acted at the ages I was and in the places I happened to be.

I shall discover what unveils itself the rest of the way.

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The first painting is an Untitled, 1950 work by Franz Kline. Next comes a Towering Cumulus, 3/3/2020, East Valentine, Nebraska, by Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. Finally, Sunflower, by Gustav Klimt.