The Parable of the Video Replay

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, what was it about the Kennedy assassination, more than any other, that we have to watch over, and over and over?”

Josh spoke thus:

An athlete was watching video of the athlete’s last performance.

“Here it is,” the athlete said to the athlete’s teammate, “Here’s where it happens.”

In the video, the athlete ran the wrong way.

“Yep,” the athlete’s teammate said, “That’s where it happens.”

The athlete stopped the video and reversed the video.

“Hey, look at that!” the athlete’s teammate said, “You play it backwards and you’re not running the wrong way anymore!”

The athlete ignored the athlete’s teammate and continued watching the video in reverse.

“You know what else doesn’t happen?” the athlete’s teammate said, “You don’t lose anymore!  Yet get farther and farther from losing the more you play that video backwards.”

The athlete stopped the video and played the video forward.

“You don’t want to do that,” the athlete’s teammate said, “You play that again, you’re going to go the wrong way again.  See?  There you go, running the wrong way again.”

The athlete stopped the video and reversed it.

“And there you go back again,” the athlete’s teammate said, “I think I like it better this way.  This way I don’t lose either.”

The athlete stopped the video again and played it forward again.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” the athlete’s teammate said, “Every time you do that, you run the wrong way again.  And every time you run the wrong way again, we lose again.  Quit running the wrong way again.”

The athlete stopped the video again and played it backwards again.

“That’s it!” the athlete’s teammate said, “That’s the direction you want to run in!  Run in that direction!”

The athlete stopped the video again and played the video forward again.

“You know,” the athlete’s teammate said, “Playing it again won’t changed what happened.  Every time you play it, you’re going to run the wrong way.  Playing it over and over and over isn’t going to change that.  Playing it over and over and over just means you’re going to run the wrong way over and over and over.  You can’t fix it by replaying it.”

The athlete stopped the video.

“I can’t fix it,” the athlete said.

“You ran the wrong way,” the athlete’s teammate said, “Don’t run the wrong way again.  That’s all you can do.”

The athlete stopped playing the video.

“Oh, come on,” the athlete’s teammate said, “Just one more time.  One more time backwards. One last time I want you to run the right way.”

The athlete smiled and played the video backwards.