Life in the past

Sometimes, we spend too much time living life in the past.

It’s easy for us to look back at things that happened before and try to live them all over again in the present. Maybe they are happy memories, and we want to recapture the things that happened before. We want to know again that excitement of a first love, the taste of a fresh picked strawberry, or the feel of the sun on our bodies in the never ending summer.

And then we look at our current life, and it doesn’t match up with our memories. Our current relationship - or lake of one - does not compare. Nothing we eat ever quite matches that taste we have in our memory. The summers are never as good as they were.

On the other hand, the memories may not be positive ones. It may be we are thinking about someone who hurt or abused us, or occasions where we hurt or abused others. We go back and think about what we could have done or said, what we could have done to protect ourselves or how worthless we are to have acted in the way we did. We are discontented and irritable - we can’t live our life now because of regrets about the past

What we are really doing here is being dishonest - we are not accepting reality.

It is good to have memories of the things that made us happy - as long as we realize they are memories. We can share them with others, and feel again the happiness they gave us. But it is important to keep making new memories - today is a day that we can look back on with pleasure in the future!

When we spend time regretting the past, re-running conversations and thinking about actions we could have taken, we are trying to change the past - and that is impossible. The facts of what happened cannot be changed. Where we did wrong we can make amends, and indeed should do so for our peace of mind. Where we have been hurt, we need to stop torturing ourselves by wondering what we did wrong or could have done better.

Acceptance doesn’t imply anything about saying that past abuse was right, but it is about accepting that it happened, rather than trying to change the past and make it un-happen.

Living in the present means knowing that the past happened - and that it is past - over and done with.

We need to only live today - yesterday has already been used.