Looking back is often a good thing but on occasion it can be a good idea to pause and think about whether the past is where you want to be.
That’s not some nugget of wisdom I read on the internet or you know, one of those book things that some people still read. No, it’s a nugget of Omneo wisdom that I mined myself over the holiday period, so the jury is out on whether it’s actually worth listening to but for me it’s something I know I’m going to have to do something about in 2015.
The past is a safe place, we know what happened and whilst there’s a perverse comfort in going over the shit that happened as well as the good stuff but what some people do and yes, I’m particularly talking about myself here, they never leave the safety of reliving the past because it means never having to look to the present, never mind the future.
The unhappy in love/work/personal circumstances can always be blamed on the past. Something happened or someone did something and rather than acknowledge it and move on we may acknowledge it but like the proverbial white elephant, it sits there in our head waiting for us to revisit so it can reassure us that it’s okay that we haven’t moved on, because we have this memory of why we find ourselves stuck.
How long that can be sustained is variable for different people. Some may have family and friends who’ll be nudging and encouraging, others won’t and will come to the realisation that they need to make a change on their own but usually it’s a combination of both. Family and friends will sow the seeds and then it’s up to Mother Nature to germinate one of them, allowing something new to grow.
I know, a lot of clichés and fortune cookie analogies here but stick with me, I’m typing as I think and I don’t type fast enough to figure out if what I’m typing makes much sense. Pretty much like when I open my mouth and speak. No, I’m still not great at multi-tasking…or touch typing.
Fortunately for me I’ve a good set of friends who persistently nudge, coax and cajole me on to think about the future despite most of them unaware that I live most of my life in the past. Having our head in the sand is a bit like any addiction, we have to recognise ourselves that we have a problem before we can truly start to deal with it.
For the last few years I’ve felt a bit like I’ve been in a bit of a trance like state, despite often telling myself to get my head out of the past and focus on the here and now because life and people move on. I continue to send cards and letters to people who gave up responding long ago.
I’m not talking about texts and emails here, I’m talking about real bits of paper with real scrawly handwriting. Actually, perhaps the reason they don’t respond is they can’t decipher what I’ve written? Regardless of that, something in my head finds it hard to erase the memory of a friendship and the cards and letters are just other things keeping me in the past.
Usually when I write post here when I’ve reached about 500 words I have some idea as to where it’s going and on this occasion I don’t. What often happens in these circumstances is I either delete the post, save it as a draft and edit the shit out of it another time or occasionally I just post it and be damned.
Editing and/or deleting this post will just mean having to revisit the past again at some point to get this out of my head so it leaves me with little choice if I want to start doing something about stepping out of the shadows of what went before into the light of the here and now.
Besides, I really want a cup of tea and to return to Netflix and my new-found addiction Chuck, which may or may not have something to do with Yvonne Strzechowski.
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