says Henry David Thoreau. I will disagree with that.
I strongly believe that being able to look back and to understand the past is what makes you appreciate the present and maybe to have a tiny idea about how future might look like.
Once I had a history teacher (that I will remember all my life — Prof. Clara) that she was teaching us the history of adult education through the history of religion. In one of her classes, I had a great insight: We can only understand our present and to shape our future if we know our past.
I am 30 years old and I must say that until now, I lived a lot of experiences. Sometimes I used to joke by saying that I could die tomorrow because I feel like I lived enough. But truth to be told, we have no idea about what is enough. On top of that, I wouldn’t say that it is or that our decision to say if we lived enough or not. Because is in this way, we close any future doors, locking ourselves in the past.
Going back to the past, each one of us is living so many experiences, but from which we are able to understand just a few of them. Sometimes, we have to collect the information and to connect the dots. That connection is painful, difficult, it might look impossible, but it is essential for us to do it. I must say that is not for everyone, I mean at least not at the same time, at the same stage of life, at the same age and so on. You got the idea.
What I discovered until now about the past – at least in my case and in few other cases that circumstances brought in my attention – is that either we run from the past, either we get stuck there. No balance, no effort to understand it or to connect the dots that I was talking about. Usually, this happens when people become aware of their situation, their missing. Why did I say this? Well, in this I’m 100% sure, that all of us we are experienced in a moment of our life that something is missing and we cannot understand what. When we realize that there is something we cannot understand, well that is the first sign or the first step, as you want to call it. After that, if we are prepared, we will start a beautiful self-discovering journey. (without being aware). We start to think more often, to identify, to read, to talk about it, to spend time alone or with people, to do nothing or to bury ourselves into work. It depends from person to person. In my opinion is more related to emotional intelligence, with our own experiences, culture and capacity to explore and understand the world and ourselves.
Once that the amazing self-discovery journey started … the past will pop-up, and that’s a natural way. And not only that it will appear often, but it will mix with your present and, suddenly, you will find yourself in a beautiful mess. Of course, you might not be able to see or understand it, but if you start to think (NOT overthink) on all those past moments that keep appearing and messing up your present, maybe you will have some hints for the journey to follow and that can make it easier.
I want to share with you my way. How I did it.
Before let me tell you that there is no universal secret and there is not a complicated process. In fact, all the complexity lies into yourself and the simple actions to be taken.
Therefore,
- I start to accept my past moments.
Oh boy, I never experience something harder than this. In order to accept it, you need to understand it, in order to understand you need to analyze and to do a fair and honest analyse. Sometimes you might say to yourself things that you will never thought that you will be able to say it. Even you might realize that it was more your fault than others’.
2. I start to understand why those specific moments are poping up and why now?
Basically, I tried to make a connection between then and now, thinking that maybe there is some lesson that I skipped and I cannot move to the next chapter. And so it was.
3. I start to leave the past behind. But never forgetting.
As it will come naturally after you will identify those lessons and you will learn them, you will be moving on, closing those moments, once they’ve been understood. I understood that they had a role, yet the role wasn’t identified.
These are the 3 basic hints which cannot be defined in time. I am not able to tell you how much time it will take. It is up to each one of us. For some people might be a few months, for others might be years.
And here it ends my argument to why we should look to the past, even if we don’t intend to go back there.
You can also interpret it as short visits to your past and in this case, you will see that I and Thoreau might share the same idea. But it is all about the meaning you give to this.
To end this article, I want to tell you the reason why I wrote it:
I’ve done it because I believe that most of us, we are afraid to go back to the past. Or even to look with honesty to our past. It is true that we see what we want to see. But are we prepared to want to see the truth as it is?
Most of us we aren’t. I wasn’t until recently.
I hope this blog post will help you and serve you as a guide whenever you will be ready to look back to your past. And remember: You are not alone.
With love and kindness,
Someone like you!
