Life is so much easier when you don’t hoard your past.
Adele
Nobody said life would be easy and it’s most certainly rough at times, but we sure don’t make it any easier by choosing to live in the past.
Somewhere down the road we have become enslaved to the superficial clock. We handed over all control of who and where we should be to a digital task master. We work long days and nights, from Monday to Friday, and then we try to redeem our demanding week by getting silly faced on the weekend.
We are slaves to the calendar. Doing anything not to get older, turn grey, or become amusingly wrinkly.
We hoard our past.
First, we look back with a tremendous sense of nostalgia, trying to hold on to things that were never meant to be held on to in the first place. Like your youth and all of the things you’ve acomplished along the way.
Looking back and hoarding your memories like a childhood stuffy, makes it unnecessarily tough for you to live happily. Chasing the glory days of yesterday will not make bring you happiness but make it harder to work, hope and dream. How can it be otherwise when you’re constantly looking back and spending so little time imagining what could be. What should be, if you work for it.
Second, we look back with a sense of dread, trying to forget all the mistakes which we understand to be responsible for why we are the way we are.
Hooey.
Don’t get sucked into the blame game and if you do know that it’s very hard to get unsucked.
Your memories are broken at best.
They are extremely unreliable because you can consciously and subconsciously manipulate them and see the past any way you want. Memories are subjective. You can feel and think yourself back anyway you want yourself to be, and in most cases, it is never flattering. If you consider yourself to be a failure for example, you will comb your past and find all indicators as to why and where it all went wrong.
But hoarding and living in your past is destructive.
It has very little to do with the present, and has no control over the future.
You can never feel or remember what you once felt. You can’t really understand what you once understood or misunderstood. You can only see who you are today, and you can decide who you want to be tomorrow.
Don’t horde your past. Dream about your future.
Work for it.
Don’t look back.
Life will be easier when you choose to look straight ahead.
