The Past

Last modified on: 08/08/06

: Time is a companion that goes with us on our journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.
-- Captain Jean-Luc Picard, played by Patrick Stewart, from the film "Star Trek: Generations"

Peace with the Past

I'm starting to learn that peace with the past does not necessarily mean finding resolution. It means accepting things that happened just the way they happened. Unlike the future, the past IS written in stone, and nothing can erase it. What comforts me is knowing that those stones are so heavy, they're not going anywhere.

The stories that you tell about your past shape your future.
-- Eric Ransdell, Fast Company

Painful Memories are Gifts of Knowledge

As things get better for me, I'm starting to leave painful past experiences behind. I'm letting them go, which is good, and they disturb me less and less each time they resurface, which is good, but I am also tending to forget them altogether, which is bad. My memories, especially the painful ones, are something to cherish, because they have given me knowledge. If I forget them, I lose everything I learned, and I suffered for nothing. How can I share what I learned if I forget, if I go numb? I've often complained of painful memories, but as I inspect them now, I can feel what precious gifts they are.

A New Life

You don't start a new life by changing things around or moving away. You can only start a new life by changing yourself. Even if your problems are generally external, you can't run away from their emotional effects by running away from them physically.

Memories Make the Moment Eternal

I often despair the fact that memories of painful events seem to rise up here and there all the time. They don't ever seem to go away, but the fact that they last and persist so much also reminds me that happy times last through memory, too. Because of the very fact that I can't change the past, in a sense anything that happens will always be there somewhere in space and time existing just as it was. Memory can be a good thing. It reveals how every moment we experience is, in a way, eternal. If every moment is eternal, nothing can ever really be lost.

Leaving Memories Alone

Every now and then, I enter a period in which all my old memories seem to surface constantly just out of the blue, like yucky seaweed washing up onto the shore during a cycle of ocean currents. What do I do? I let them dry up in the hot sun. If I try to get rid of them, I only seem to strengthen them, but when I just let them sit, motionless in the sand as a stroll past them, they disintegrate. They fade on their own, or they go back where they came from... and less powerful than before.

A Past Me

Sometimes my mind is flooded with so many painful memories that make me cringe and sigh... because I feel as though they just happened and that they are still happening. When I last felt this way, I tried thinking of those events as though they had happened in a previous lifetime, because in a sense we are all being reborn all the time when we move or make a life change that really puts the past in its place. So I essentially detached from my painful memories, not disowning them, but understanding on a primal level that those past events and even the past me are over, and I really can start anew. I think this is one case in which a sense of discontinuity is an asset.

Shout It Away

Sometimes an event or situation in the present reminds me of something horrible in the past. Although it sounds very simplistic, it helps me tremendously to say to myself with a loud inner voice, "But that was the past. This is now. It is not the same."

The Shape of Your Landmines

Ask yourself what kinds of events and feelings constitute your most common painful memories. In other words, what kinds of memories return to haunt you? Are you plagued mostly by regret? What kind of regret? By asking yourself these questions, you approach your painful memories on a more intellectual level. You learn more about them and about yourself, and this knowledge will help you get rid of them.

Here are some types of memories that might plague you:
-- embarrassment or shame
-- loose ends, unfinished business, regrets, unresolved issues (examples: a sudden and total separation, a goal you never accomplished)
-- encounters with things you found deeply unacceptable (examples: learning details of the holocaust, witnessing inequality or sexism, a scene from a horror movie)

Back Doors

It has helped me to approach memories from a different angle. When people seek to deactivate landmines, they do not walk across the field to find them. They get down on their belly and scoot across the ground. They unearth the landmine from the side using tools. I approach my painful memories in the same way. For instance, I think about other trains of thought and chains of associations (such as memories of other events that occurred around the same time) that lead to my painful memory and change the way I think about the event in terms of those new thoughts.

Pleasant Details

It helps me to recall pleasant experiences and positive details, especially those surrounding a painful memory. Painful memories are only one small portion of my past. I try to notice the good memories surrounding the bad ones. I remember the pleasant things that happened immediately before and immediately after the painful experiences. For example, when I was in eighth grade, I was a member of the yearbook staff. I posed for a photo by appearing to drop all my school books in the hallway. The other staff members stood around me to mimick a bustling hallway. Unfortunately, I displayed a very convincing expression of hurt and annoyance. My classmates, upon seeing the picture in the yearbook, thought I had really dropped my books. I tried to explain, but I realized then how stupid it was in the first place to pose in such a self-incriminating scene. I understood why the rest of the staff had so easily allowed me to play the part.

Years later, when a train of thought pushed this memory to the surface, I felt a pang of embarrassment and regret, as if a major tragedy had occurred. However, the details of the event were much less serious than my reaction dictated. The classmates who teased me were otherwise friendly to me. Posing for the picture was actually very fun. I was able to be creative and dramatic. When I recalled all these positive details, the memory did not seem so torturous anymore.

That's a Wrap

It helps me to realize that it is all over. Most painful memories are remnants of tragedies and wars that ended long ago. The soldiers have departed from the battleground leaving an otherwise peaceful landscape. Despite the long life of a landmine, they mark events in time that ceased to exist and should no longer matter. I am sure that every student who knew me in junior high school immediately forgot about the photo of me in the yearbook. Those who have not forgotten are the sort of people whose opinion I should not take seriously.