“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could've, would've happened... or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move on.”
Tupac Shakur not only raised an interesting point speaking those exact words, but a crucial and valid one at that. Why? Well, while we all know that the past is irreversible and we can’t undo the decisions we made, we also - counterintuitively enough - speculate as many hypothetical choices and outcomes we could’ve or would’ve done, if only turning back time was possible.
Allow me to elaborate. Perhaps the mistake you made was something understandable but potentially life-changing. Perhaps you were scared and couldn’t gather enough courage to tell “the one who got away” how you felt. Perhaps you couldn’t travel to your dream destination or take that program, job, etc. because of an issue at home. There were other circumstances that somehow inadvertently impeded you from pursuing that next step forward. We get it. Life happens.
But then there are other times; where, although it’s also understandable enough we react as human beings with emotion and stress, that we exercised poor judgement and indirectly or otherwise executed negative repercussions from our actions. Vice versa, we could’ve also been unfortunate victims in certain situations. Perhaps we were severely bullied by our classmates, became accomplices in a romantic affair, involuntarily developed addictions, or were assaulted in an unmentionable way. Maybe we were deceived by a friend, cheated on by a partner, harassed by a colleague, or abused by a loved one.
Whether we were the victims, perpetrators or a little bit of both - with the many wonders of the world we can’t control - we’ve all gone through something real. Something that haunts us while we walk down the street, something that crosses our minds while we glance at a word on a paper at work, something that startles us while a familiar-looking person intersects our paths on a girls’ night out, something that interrupts our peace while we (try to) sleep at night.
Perhaps it’s because of guilt. Perhaps it’s because of fear. Perhaps it’s because of some innate desire to monitor the situation.
But it doesn’t help matters; when the truth is all over social media, “everyone” (seems to) know everything and lives in the exact same town as you. It’s hard to forget, when you share mutual friends or run into the same people while completing a necessary grocery run or just eating at your local cafe.
It’s 2017, and we’re trying to forget. We’re trying to forgive others, and we’re trying to forgive ourselves. We’re trying to let go of a situation. We’re trying to move on and better our lives. But when someone’s making hurtful comments about you, you’re being notified through Instagram or Facebook of “hinted” statuses or intentional “likes” and “follows” of people you’re not sure you trust...well it’s kind of hard to forget.
Even though it’s easier to block and delete on the internet than it is to run the other way out of a restaurant or mall, eventually you’re going to run into that person you’ve been dreading of confronting, and you’re going to have to face them.
When it comes to obsessing about a situation - that could’ve happened minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or even years ago - it seems sorta ridiculous at first thought to invest so much time and effort into thinking about someone who frankly may not spare two cents about you. But what others don’t realize is that there’s a reason why we constantly worry, criticize and pick apart a situation we ourselves were involved with.
When a pattern of behaviours or consequences continues to repeat in our lives, we wonder if we’re the common denominator from being at fault. Sure, none of us are perfect and even if we try to be the ontologically kind and good people we are, even a lack of assertiveness could lead to an individual’s disrespect towards our boundaries and then harmful impact on our lives.
But if some specific situation keeps happening to us, we can’t help but wonder if we do something to attract that wrong situation and attention...or even inherently cause those results ourselves. So we analyze a situation, see where we went wrong, and constantly remind ourselves - while mentally beating ourselves up - that we mustn’t do it again.
Being reminded of all the ways people have hurt you and vice versa is like keeping a score card; it accumulates, and you start believing what others have said about you. This is where the root of our lack of self-esteem and confidence becomes reinforced or maintains itself.
But despite whether we could’ve done more, less or not, the truth of the matter is what’s done is done. We can’t go back and erase the writing on the wall. We have to accept reality and leave those pieces on the floor, once and for all.
Easier said than done. But it’s an inanimate matter we need to transcend, and it’ll be a process we can’t avoid.