Is understanding our past the key to our future? and why should our future lie in the past? Should we runaway from our past and completely disregard it as a no go to place or should we embrace it and learn from it?
An honest answer to the above questions holds in my opinion the key answer to our future. I believe that our future can be predicted according to our reaction or inaction to life’s failures and the unlearned lessons hidden in our past.
The experiences and memories laden in our past hold life shaping elements that have moulded us into the kind of person we are now.
When looking back on our childhood we may have recollection of a past where we felt safe and protected, or where we had to keep ourselves safe from harboring danger. The ambivalence of the positive and negative are interwoven in most of our life experiences. Yet it is those very experiences or occurrences that will determine later on how we react to life.
The environment, our family, our relationships with our peers, the conversations that were held at the dinner table will, together, inevitably shape our thoughts and our beliefs of how we shall respond when confronted with similar situations in adulthood.
Scarcity and abundance will have both an ambivalent effect on our life. Yet our reactions to the above experiences will be tainted by other people’s perceptions and reactions to life.
Our tomorrows will be both wrapped in stories that we have actively created and lived, as well as inevitably interwoven with remnants of our parents, friends and occasionally total strangers’ stories. At times, even our narrative will be one that was never ours in the first place.
According to the perception that we have of ourself and the life that we are entitled to, we will at some points in our life buy into somebody else’s narrative. So how can we truly live our future and be totally present in manifesting our dreams, our aspirations and embrace the inspirations of which life is filled? My personal experience has been one where to fully live my future I had to embrace and accept the past in its entirety. By embracing and accepting the past as part of an indispensable tool to learn from, I was able to move forward knowing that I was not responsible for how people reacted to life, but I could decide how I reacted to it and how I was going to let it affect my future.
Being of a curious nature, I always demand an answer to any question that I ask. From life too we should demand that our questions be answered. We should establish the habit of questioning ourselves to why we acted or reacted in a certain way. Asking the uncomfortable questions may lead us to the discovery of patterns in our behavior and thinking that may have no place in our life simply because they are inherited from somebody else.
We live or in some cases re-live somebody’s else life. Wherever we are in life is the direct response to how we answered or left unanswered our deep rooted questions. Questions to why we let fear set in when we have to make a difficult decision as to which direction we should steer our life in. Questions about why at times we let others run our life and make the wrong decision for us. Why we procrastinate or we choose inaction when important or life changing decisions have to be made.
The answers to our questions hold the key to our future and the realizations of our dreams. Too often we let our dreams, our aspirations and inspirations be silenced by that inner voice deeply rooted in the false friend that lives within us. That false or imaginary friend that whispers in our ears telling us, that we are not ready, nobody is interested in what we have to say. All this inner talk that perhaps was planted there by an uncaring comment, has tainted and robbed us of an astounding future.
Embracing our story means allowing ourself to be free of the chains that have defined other people’s perception of life. By establishing a habit of demanding an answer to even the most difficult questions we may be on the way to unleash that inner greatness that would otherwise be forever lost for others to enjoy. Like the sound of a beautiful voice, the canvas adorned by the beautiful strokes of a budding artist, or the words that no-one wanted to read but that have filled the pages of books. Whatever and wherever your greatness lies, do not deprive your future of it.
Do not settle because of the perceived failure that so many have held on to, instead of treating failure as per what it actually is an “ invaluable life lesson”.
When we embrace our past and decide that that very past has made us compassionate and caring human beings, fearless when confronted with obstacles and somewhat has made us embrace a badass attitude that’s when we can finally free ourselves of people’s judgments.
Our past has taught us the invaluable lesson that our worth is beyond anyone’s pre-conception of life or of us. It has taught us that every breath we take, every heartbeat in us is worth our very own existence and that no matter what and irrespective of the glamour of our accomplishments, as long as we have lived life to our full potential, leaving every stone unturned to reach our purpose and our dreams, then our life’s stories will have been worthy of having been lived. So yes our future lies in the past, because what we thought were failures where actually invaluable life lessons, our trampoline to an outstanding future.