50 Obvious Things People Found Out Hilariously Late In Life

To find out why many of us realize obvious things only later in life, we reached out to Joshua Klapow, Ph.D. He is a clinical psychologist and creator of MentalDrive, an initiative to help people improve their well-being by providing strategies they can use every day. According to him, we humans naturally adapt to things that happen frequently and regularly. 

"We literally are hardwired to move the common occurrences into the background of our consciousness so that we can look out for novel things," he told Bored Panda. "This happens because things that are not obvious, that are not common, that stand out, could pose a threat to our well-being, or could be something really rewarding."  

Klapow explained that we often take things we do and see every day for granted, "only to pay more attention to those actions and interactions that grab our attention. The obvious goes in the background, so we reserve brain bandwidth to notice the novel, standout occurrences in our life." 

However, throughout our lives, there are fewer things that are different and unknown to us. "We start seeing the same things over and over. We call that maturity and growth and development." When we become adults, we can look at the seemingly common in a more detailed way. "And when we do, we often discover that that obvious has so much more to it that we missed earlier on," the clinical psychologist said.

"Another reason we miss the obvious is that we sometimes are not ready psychologically to handle [it]," Klapow added. "A relationship that is toxic, a love interest that is too intense, a realization that we don’t have a skill or strength we believe we have." While these things may be crystal clear to the outside observer, "our own psychological defenses go up and protect us from seeing the obvious. Because to do so might overwhelm us emotionally and psychologically." 

"This pattern can go on for years, until which time we either have the psychological maturity or our life circumstances change such that we can look at the obvious which once posed a psychological threat in a more mature, less defensive way."

Both of these processes are something that everyone has in common. "People have these in varying degrees and, more importantly, they learn to overcome these hardwired tendencies in order to see life more clearly and experience life more fully." 

Klapow stated that we experience life from our perspective. So what can be 100% clear to others may be totally missed by us. "Our defense mechanisms, our rationalizations, our attention to other aspects of our life can carry us through time without any insight into what others see so clearly," he said. And when we realize we lived our whole lives believing untrue things, we might feel uncomfortable.

"We are embarrassed because the obvious is often simple and clear to everyone else." He mentioned that we feel this way for several reasons. The first would be that we simply missed what others saw. Then, "we may have made mistakes, hurt others, missed out on opportunities because we didn't see the obvious. Lastly, we have to acknowledge to others and ourselves that despite how we think of ourselves or how we are seen by others, we have missed something."

When we uncover evident things, it can feel like discovering something brand new. It all depends on how we interpret the experience: "It’s easy to feel embarrassed, frustrated, guilty that we missed something that was there the whole time."

We should try to "turn the internal dialog around and tell ourselves: 'I now see things differently, more clearly, and that is going to help me from this day moving forward'. Then, the initial embarrassment and frustration can transition into gratitude and excitement for arriving at the discovery of the obvious," he continued.

"We are growing, learning, adapting organisms. What is foreign at one point in time can become obvious later as we learn and develop. At any point in our life, we have a chance to look at what we see every day and look at it differently. We never know what we may discover if we are courageous enough to consider the obvious when the world around us is telling us it is sitting right in front of us," Klapow concluded.