One of life’s blessings is not being able to feel physical pain that happened in the past. We can certainly remember the incident but cannot recreate the pain. Anyone who has had a child or kidney stone can relate.

Too bad that’s not the case with emotional pain. It seems we can’t have selective memory when it comes to emotional hurt.

We can attempt to color the past a certain way to recreate an airbrushed history but both the incident and the pain are contained in the memory.

The Grasshopper had this to say on the topic: “Sensing what used to be is always bittersweet.”

There will be enough memories that pop in to our awareness on their own without having to go digging for them. When you purposely dig, you will unearth a pile of unresourceful emotion along with the pictures of sunshine and rainbows.

Living in the past is not possible, but feeling its pain is.

Referencing the past can be useful to add perspective, but past that, it’s often a drama class that keeps you stuck in the first act.

Go to any bar late on a Tuesday night and just listen to the patrons’ stories. The “used to be” and “missed opportunities” soliloquies dominate the narrative. Ask any hairdresser about the stories he or she hears. They punctuate the past.

What is the purpose? My experience is that people believe that if they tell their story just “one more time,” it will relieve the pain. That never works.

Resist the temptation to visit the past on purpose. It can bring you an unadulterated warm fuzzy from time to time, but, by and large, you will inflict more pain than you will experience pixie dust.

I am reminded of the observation of my late teacher, Dr. Dave Dobson who said, “You don’t have to go to the dump to remember what garbage smells like.”

The past is not a springboard forward. That leap can only happen in the present.

Where do you want to go? If you answer “back into the past,” that fairy tale will end with the wolf eating you for lunch, again.

All the best,

John