Sometimes you can learn from the past, sometimes you can't -- often the lesson is something you already know, and just weren't being responsible for. We generally want to find meaning in pain, from our desire to "even the scales", i.e. to compensate for the pain by being able to say "I gained something thereby". But, is it really true? How much did you gain from this pain? Maybe nothing. Maybe it was just avoidable pain that occurred because of a poor choice made, or as you say -- an inability to see the future. A risk that didn't pay off. To me what's most interesting in this topic is the craving to even the scales and compensate. Why? Why is that necessary? Why can't shit just be shit? My view is that it happens because we're typically and chronically caught up in a sort of abstract belief that something is wrong with life, or something is wrong with ourselves. That somehow, at the very bottom of the stack, there's a crack in the foundation of reality that defies repair... and which expresses itself in a continuous search for something that will make the whole thing whole again. I say this is delusion. There is no crack in the foundation of reality, it's just that we get confused about who we are and what's what. Life is already whole, we are already OK. While there are always going to be specific problems that need to be addressed, they happen inside a broader perspective of "life is what it is, and that's sufficient". When someone recovers that experience of life, a lot of the searching for compensation just stops.

Sell it on Ebay Start a fire with it. Wipe you butt Save it to show your grandkids Run back to your ex, crying to be taken back.

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Learning from your mistakes is one of the most potent teachers there is.