The Past

 

The past, what is about the past that we can not seem to overcome? It haunts us, holds us back, prevent us, clouds our judgement and blinds us. Most of the people enter therapy trying to cut the cord with the past or to get over it. People want to forget it like it never even happened. They don’t want to be bothered by it. But ask yourself, would you be the same person if you did not experience whatever you did, bitter or sweet. There’s a very common saying that I am going to repeat ‘everything happens for a reason’. There’s also a very common saying associated with it ‘everything happens for a reason, but I wish I knew the reason’ and there lies the answer. The reason, the meaning- that’s a key.

One of the most famous psychologist Victor Frankl who worked immensely in the field of existential psychology wrote an eminent book called “Man’s search for meaning”. The book surrounds around his life at a concentration camp during world war II. He never tried to forget his past no matter how dark it was because it empowered him, made him the man he was. He embraced it, learned from it, and grew from it. What made him sustain in such dire circumstance was the meaning of his life that he was holding onto. He found a purpose to live, to endure the pain, which made it easy from him to live. He probably would have never become what he did if he never experienced it all. He developed his theories at the time he was held captive at the concentration camp. It was the suffering per say that inspired him. No doubt it was inhuman circumstances that no one should ever go through, but it was already done. Nothing could be changed about it. He had a choice in front of him- whether to originate something from it or dwell in it and complaint about it, obviously he chose the former choice, the wise one.

Choices, we all have choices. We chose what we become and what happens to us. Sometimes we don’t have much of a choice but usually we have the power to choose. We also choose how we perceive our past which is a huge game changer- Perspective. The way we choose to perceive things impact how we feel about those things and how much they are going to have an impact on us and what type of an impact. There are many ways to adjudge a situation and the way you choose to perceive it will determine what you are going to do about it. If you perceive your past as an unfortunate incident that just happened to you and you abide by the emotions accompanying that situation you would never be able to realize or appreciate the message, the meaning, the significance, and the lesson enriched in that experience. Nothing just happens to us with no significance; it happens to teach us- a perspective that could be life changing. Whenever anything happens, we face a dilemma of how we are going to perceive that particular situation. Is it going to be a lesson packed with meaning or just a painful experience with nothing to extract. The former choice will cultivate and flourish life and latter one will lead to a decline and will hold you to itself. Now it’s a choice we have been making unconsciously all our lives and have been impacting the quality of our lives and experiences.

I don’t believe in anything such as a bad experience. This is a mindset of defeated person. This perspective just prevents us from growth, from the potential that we can extract from it. Sitting and reminiscing about the unfortunate event won’t ever help you in overcoming, it will only make you captive and imprisoned in your own world. Why do you want to forget about it? It didn’t happen with you to forget, then it losses its purpose, its value and there’s no good in that. Procure the meaning from it and isolate the emotions, let the meaning speak to you. Let your experience has a voice and be open to hear it out. The moment you attach a meaning to it, it no longer hurts, it is not painful, it doesn’t haunt or blinds and it doesn’t hold us back. Do not just let an experience squander, make the best out of it. Who you are today is not the sum total of your experiences, it is the sum total of your perspective of those experiences.