While some of it does not knit all that well together, this post was an internal rationale in claiming the past in order to move forward with the future.
I think about the past a lot.
In truth, I have a lot of the past to think about!
To make matters worse, I am a nostalgist of the highest order and I deal with history in much of my writing.
But in all seriousness, it does not hurt to look back on our lives from time to time as a reminder of where we came from, and how far we have traveled to get to where we are today. I do so philosophically and careful not to beat myself up over some of the things that went wrong, or that might have been done differently if I had a chance to do some of it over again.
I once heard about a gifted doctor who talked about an operation he had performed on a young boy to remove a tumor from his eye. He said the tumor turned out to be an undeveloped embryo of the boy's twin. Apparently, as unusual as it may seem, that occurrence is not too uncommon and is a graphic example of the fact that each one of us, metaphorically speaking, may well carry a tumor inside of us that is part of the past.
It is interesting to note that the inventor of penicillin never revealed his findings until a colleague came upon them many years later and released the well-kept secret to the world. It seems that the father of the gifted Scottish research scientist Alexander Fleming kept telling him as a boy to "keep still!" and this so influenced the youngster that he found it almost impossible to speak out, even when he had discovered one of the great healing drugs of all time.
Had Flemming felt free to release his discovery when he first made it, many more lives could have been saved and I am sure in retrospect that must have weighed heavily on him.
Anyone who has engaged in an adventure of self-discovery will come to realize that nowhere will you find a better resource than in your past. There is a vast treasure there and it can be mined and made to work in one's favor.
It is so easy, however, to get caught up in our successes and achievements and memories of happy(er) times. But we ere if we rest too much on our laurels. In fact, it is also a mistake to label the past as either good or bad...All of our past can be useful to us. We learn especially from the things we have done to, and for, other people. We do not need to be condemned by such old memories, but we can explore them in building our lives as they are meant to be.
In my mind, the shape of our present and our future does indeed lie in claiming the past. In so doing, we may somehow let go of those things from the past that are both painful and oddly enough -- dear to us. The late Karl Olsson frequently said that one of the great acts of faith in the Bible is found in Genesis where Abraham buried Sarah. There we hear Abraham saying, "give me property among you for a burying place that I may bury my dead out of sight."
So often we do not bury the dead "out of sight." We keep them alive in our memory in an unhealthy way. We keep living with the dead to our own detriment.
Abraham was able to place his beloved Sarah in the cave of Machpelah and to say "our life together is over," and move on. This was how he honored Sarah. The past was claimed by allowing it to go.
As difficult as it was at the time, I have been there and done that...More than once!
And I am left with memories, neither good nor bad. Just memories.
They do not define me.
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