Year-End Reflection: Moving Beyond 'Good Year, Bad Year'

"As the year ends, the reflection impulse kicks in. We scroll through photos, scan our calendars, take stock. How was your year? The question seems simple enough. But watch what happens when you try to answer it. First come the flashes: a vacation, an argument, a project completed, a relationship ended. Images without order. Then comes the verdict: good year, bad year, somewhere in between. We move from scattered impressions to summary judgment, often skipping everything in between."

"Twenty-four centuries ago, Plato mapped four levels of understanding in what scholars call the Divided Line. At the bottom sits conjecture: shadows, reflections, vague impressions of things. Above that, opinion: beliefs about particulars, judgments that may or may not be grounded. Higher still, logical understanding: grasping why things work as they do. At the top, abstract principle: the foundational truths that organize everything below."

Most year-end reflection stays at the surface, consisting of scattered impressions and snap judgments about the year. Plato's Divided Line describes four levels of understanding: conjecture (shadows and vague impressions), opinion (particular beliefs), logical understanding (grasping why things work), and abstract principle (foundational truths). Year-end reviews commonly remain at conjecture and jump to opinion without developing logical understanding or identifying abstract principles. Genuine understanding requires recognizing patterns and extracting the principles that connect events into a coherent narrative. Without pattern recognition and principle-finding, judgments like "good year" or "bad year" remain uninformative.

Read at Psychology Today