Does The Past Keep Catching Up On You?
A lot of us have heard the line; 'The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on.
' The problem with a lot of us is that the finger doesn't really move on.
It stays rooted to the spot.
In the past.
Here, our old friend the imagination is in his element.
Now, you may have had a marvelous past.
You may have enjoyed great success, both financially and socially and then something terrible happened and it all went away.
But the past is the past.
The only way you can escape the past is to build a future.
You can pack your suitcase with all your belongings, and set off to some lovely, tropical paradise -- but the past will always be with you.
To sit and brood on the past, be it good or bad, is a recipe for disaster.
On the other hand, we may not brood about the past all the time.
Perhaps it was our second day on the job and we were yelled at by someone who was bald.
Thenceforth, anyone who's bald brings back that memory and we're immediately suspicious of all bald headed men.
Or worse still is the poor woman who was badly abused in her first marriage and now thinks that all men are sadists.
Does the past keep catching up on you? Whatever reason you feel the way you do, effectively, your life stops there.
You can take it a stage further, if you've been yelled at by a bald-headed boss.
It can extend to a fear of all authority figures, so making you a doormat.
Again, you're putting your life on hold.
A psychiatrist coined the term, 'learned helplessness'.
You buy a pet and keep him in a cage.
Not through cruelty, but because you don't want to lose him.
One day, though, the cage is left open.
When you return, he's still sitting in his cage, because he's learned that's the thing to do.
Humans can be just the same.
"It's always been done like this.
I see no reason to change.
" Even if change would be infinitely better.
One thing to remember about the past is that you can't change it.
You can change the present and the future, but once something is in the past, that's it.
So looked at from that sort of logic, it really is a pointless exercise to brood over things about which you can do nothing.
Yes, you may have had a hellish past, you may have had a wonderful past, but what ever past you've had, thinking about it won't do you a bit of good.
Except through experience.
A few years ago, you made the mistake of doing something which proved disastrous.
You look back on that time and make very sure you don't make the same mistake.
That's using the past sensibly, as a guide, but to simply sit an dwell on it is not only pointless, you're inviting depression into your life and he's a most unwelcome visitor.
' The problem with a lot of us is that the finger doesn't really move on.
It stays rooted to the spot.
In the past.
Here, our old friend the imagination is in his element.
Now, you may have had a marvelous past.
You may have enjoyed great success, both financially and socially and then something terrible happened and it all went away.
But the past is the past.
The only way you can escape the past is to build a future.
You can pack your suitcase with all your belongings, and set off to some lovely, tropical paradise -- but the past will always be with you.
To sit and brood on the past, be it good or bad, is a recipe for disaster.
On the other hand, we may not brood about the past all the time.
Perhaps it was our second day on the job and we were yelled at by someone who was bald.
Thenceforth, anyone who's bald brings back that memory and we're immediately suspicious of all bald headed men.
Or worse still is the poor woman who was badly abused in her first marriage and now thinks that all men are sadists.
Does the past keep catching up on you? Whatever reason you feel the way you do, effectively, your life stops there.
You can take it a stage further, if you've been yelled at by a bald-headed boss.
It can extend to a fear of all authority figures, so making you a doormat.
Again, you're putting your life on hold.
A psychiatrist coined the term, 'learned helplessness'.
You buy a pet and keep him in a cage.
Not through cruelty, but because you don't want to lose him.
One day, though, the cage is left open.
When you return, he's still sitting in his cage, because he's learned that's the thing to do.
Humans can be just the same.
"It's always been done like this.
I see no reason to change.
" Even if change would be infinitely better.
One thing to remember about the past is that you can't change it.
You can change the present and the future, but once something is in the past, that's it.
So looked at from that sort of logic, it really is a pointless exercise to brood over things about which you can do nothing.
Yes, you may have had a hellish past, you may have had a wonderful past, but what ever past you've had, thinking about it won't do you a bit of good.
Except through experience.
A few years ago, you made the mistake of doing something which proved disastrous.
You look back on that time and make very sure you don't make the same mistake.
That's using the past sensibly, as a guide, but to simply sit an dwell on it is not only pointless, you're inviting depression into your life and he's a most unwelcome visitor.
Source...