Thinking About The Past

Your life is written in permanent ink. There's no going back to erase the past, tweak your mistakes, or fill in missed opportunities. When the moment's over, your fate is sealed. 

Are you sure?

Maybe, if you look a little closer, you will notice that the ink never really dries on any of our experiences. These experiences change their meaning the longer you look at them.

There are more ways of thinking about the past than just nostalgia or regret. There is also a kind of questioning that enhances an experience after the fact. To really contemplate the past is to allow fresh context to be introduced over the years to fill out the picture. 

This helps us to keep the memory alive, so it does not become just a caricature of itself. It helps us because we can look honestly at a painful experience, and call it by its name.

Time is the most powerful force in the universe. It can turn a giant into someone completely human, just trying to make their way through life. Or time can tell you how you really felt about someone, even if you couldn't feel it or say it at the time. It can put your childhood dreams in context with adult problems or turn a universal consensus into an embarrassing fad. It can expose cracks in a relationship that once seemed perfect.

Or time can keep a friendship going through thoughts alone, even if you'll never see them again. Time can cause a complete 180 degree turn and make your greatest shame into the source of your greatest power, or time can turn a moment of pride into something nice, but done for the wrong reasons.

Time can also make what felt like the end of the world look like a natural part of life.

For just about everyone, the past is still mostly a blank page, so we may be doomed to repeat it. However, the past is still worth considering if it brings you closer to the truth.

Maybe it's not so bad to dwell in the past, and walk around in the memories, to lessen the simplification of time, and put some effort into reconstructing it.

Maybe we should think of memory itself as an art form, in which the real work begins as soon as the paint hits the canvas. And remember that a work of art is never finished, only abandoned.

TJ