“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”-Winston Churchill Before I read this quote, I always questioned the family tradition of reflecting on your past year on your birthday, before projecting your goals for your new year. For me, it was quite bizarre. So, there I was on my sixteenth birthday, swinging on the rusty old swing in my porch and reflecting on the 15th year of my life that just passed. All the while thinking, why? This quote is easily the wisest thing I have ever heard. A lot of people tend to be in a hurry to forget the past and move on into the future. Except, it is a delicate balance and one cannot exist without the other. Instead, they propel each other. This is consistent in every field of life, take my academics for example. The more I progress into Calculus, the more I look back to use the basic elementary math I learned in the past. I am much more successful in academia when I reflect upon my past. From past learning styles to past subjects learned, I am equipped better for the future challenges ahead. Or perhaps take research for example. The tangle between past, reality, and future is very delicate. To begin a new project in a lab, you have to read papers on that project dating back to the 90s. Because the farther backward you can look, the better your hypothesis and research design is going to be. So, it all started to make sense. Now, I gladly reflect every year on my birthday!