Why live in a non-existent place?

Humans love wasting time trying to live in a place they can never get to – their memories. In retrospect, everything seems good. ‘Remember those days when we were students?’ they say. ‘Those days were perfect! No worries at all. I was so free and happy.’ Remember those annoying professors and boring classes? The relative lack of money? Or staying up all night trying to finish papers? The exams and many tears of youthful angst?

Why do people look at the past with rose-tinted glasses while moaning about the present? Because memories are imperfect. Research indicates that we tend to forget boring details of the past when compared to the present. Today seems so annoying. You need to look after a house, pay your staff, take care of loved ones, handle your finances, pay bills, meet deadlines, do chores… life is so hard now. Those didn’t exist in the past or if they did, we don’t remember them.

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” – Lewis Carroll

When we think of the past, we tend to gloss over the mundane daily worries in general. We can afford to dwell on the parts we want to because we already know the results. Burning the midnight lamp and the awful anxiety of speeding towards a school assignment deadline recede into the unfathomable depths of our psyche when we relive the victory of getting a straight ‘A’. The lack of uncertainty in past events is a consolation to the human mind which is constantly trying to defend and protect itself against the uncertainties of life. Tomorrow or the future is always more frightening than the past. As time passes, the past seems even more perfect. Or is it? No specific time in our lives is as perfect as we think it was.

“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put the past together again. So let’s remember: Don’t try to saw sawdust.” – Dale Carnegie

Memories are not made up of only good things. Everyone goes through experiences they perceive as bad – this just means the experience did not work out the way they wanted it to. Most people find it easier to dwell in these places than the bright spots of their past. They obsess over these experiences. Or try to erase those memories by resisting them rather than accepting and embracing them. This obsession over past experiences harms only one person – you. When your mind is filled with obsessive negativity, it means that you have not embraced some parts of your life and are unable or unwilling to let go of those associations. Why enslave yourself to memories that bring no joy? Instead, train your mind to focus on the good people you met and the positive experiences you had. This will help you move to a brighter place in the present too.

Often, we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. – Helen Keller

Would we appreciate the day without experiencing night? Opposites complement each other – each exists because of the other. In life, light and darker times complement each other and nothing stays the same. Many, unable to accept how life functions, believe that they can protect themselves against life’s uncertainties by sticking to a routine at all costs and fighting even a whiff of change. They are forced to accept life’s vagaries even as they refuse to participate in it fully. Their unwillingness to let go and move in sync with where life takes them only brings more misery and regrets.

“If you’re still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today.” – Joyce Chapman

The only way to move forward with lightness in this fabulous, strange, messy, and funny journey called life is by embracing all your experiences, regardless of how you perceive them. Cultivating a more realistic view of the past helps us travel from the past to where we are now – the present. Life happens only in this moment. Everything we do now is what we call life. It is not possible to live a past or future moment without losing the present, which is all we have.

We can spend large chunks of our life planning, but life will still not happen according to our plan. A big picture plan for life’s key needs can serve as a safety net but beyond that, life becomes meaningful only if we flow with it and allow it to show us more possibilities. The temptation to resist this flow is great but becomes far easier to handle when we begin looking within and start drawing upon our inner resources. Otherwise, hoarded memories clutter our mental and physical life, leaving no space to welcome new and delightful experiences.  

Don’t lose your life in the past or plan obsessively for the future. Instead, act in the best way you can in this moment and do the same in the moments that follow. Trust in life and keep looking ahead. Life doesn’t happen exactly as you planned but it will be far better than you ever imagined if you let go of hoarded memories and give it a chance.

Nothing that happened before this moment has any power over you whatsoever, except to the extent to which you carry it into this moment. – Marianne Williamson