Looking for a word or phrase for realizing a failure only after a long time
There is a kind of situation that seems to occur somewhat commonly, that goes something like:
Figure out some way to handle a particular situation
do it regularly, and make a habit of it, as it seems to work OK …
… and only much later actually realize that it very much isn’t OK, that it’s been doing harm all the time, and that it’s too late to fix anything.
Does there exist any good words or phrases for this kind of situation?
Solution 1:
Dawn on too late: dawn on, Defined by Macmillan Dictionary
dawn on someone: if something dawns on you, you realize it for the first time
Thus, if something dawns on you too late, you realize it, but it but it is too late to do anything about it.
"As she was being prepped for a quadruple bypass, it dawned on her, but too late, that fast food three times a day for thirty years had not been a good idea, however much she hated cooking."
Solution 2:
That's the way the cookie crumbles
- NORTH AMERICAN informal that's how things turn out (often used of an undesirable but unalterable situation).
from google.
Solution 3:
Twenty-twenty hindsight (American English idiom, dating from the first half of the 1900s):
knowledge after the fact, as in:
'With twenty-twenty hindsight, I wouldn't have bought these tickets.'
This idiom uses twenty-twenty in the optometrist's sense, that is, 'indicating normal vision' and hindsight in the sense of 'looking back' or 'reconsidering'.
Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. 2nd edn. 2013
Solution 4:
no use closing/shutting the stable (or barn) door after the horse has bolted; no use locking the stable door after the horse is stolen
closing/shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted
trying to stop something bad happening when it has already happened and the situation cannot be changed: Improving security after a major theft would seem to be a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Cambridge Idioms Dictionary
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride; if ifs and buts were pots and pans, there'd be no work for tinkers (or tinkers' hands); if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, it'd be Christmas everyday
If you could achieve your aims simply by wishing for them, life would be very easy.
"I wish it didn’t have to be that way." "If wishes were horses," David sighed.
Oxford Dictionaries