Memories that you form in your life mark you, in a positive but also in a negative sense. We find it difficult to cherish the positive memories, but we find it even more difficult to let go of the negative ones, close them down and then move on. How do we give the past a place in the future?
What do we do with memories?
When someone dear to you dies, you often see that people start reminiscing. Together with others or alone and there is nothing wrong with that. But we live in the future in such a way that the NOW hardly comes to the fore and beautiful memories are only brought to the surface when something negative passes through our lives. If we don’t give that negative a proper place, we drag it around like a millstone around our neck.
Need tools?
Photos help some people to bring back memories, others see an attribute and help them bring back memories and others dig into the memory with the greatest of ease and get all kinds of things out of it. But there must be a reason to realize how good you had it with someone or whether a certain situation was very pleasant. And that is remarkable on the one hand, because to what extent did you enjoy it at the time and on the other hand perhaps not. We just want to move forward and forward, as if we cannot or are not even allowed to do otherwise.
Future
We have unlearned to live in the NOW and that means to enjoy what is happening NOW, enjoy the immediate environment, children, animals, friends, nature, etc. We are focused on the future and there is nothing wrong with that, but if this replaces the NOW, we are really going wrong. The balance between enjoying the NOW and thinking about the future is gone and the speed of Western society and which we are almost automatically a part of is partly to blame for this.
Coping with traumatic event
If you have experienced a traumatic event, a process of grieving follows. But we quickly decide that we should just get on with life (self and the environment) and many people have not yet really given the traumatic event a place. If it has not been able to find a place, one needs help and the other can do it themselves – it will resurface in one way or another at some point in your life. It can even hinder you from moving on, because it lingers in your head to a greater or lesser extent.
Letting go
Not being able to let go is disastrous, because it stagnates your process of learning and moving forward and at various times it pulls you back into the process that has not been completed. Letting go at that moment means going back into the process and really experiencing the pain. Some help from the sidelines is often helpful in this phase, because letting go of an event is a lonely process. Giving something a place as they call it, when have you done that? Actually, when it no longer affects your life. If you can look at it as a given. A memory that no longer plays a role in your life and where you feel absolutely no guilt.
To block
This also means that the moment you have given it a place in your life, you can close it off. And that is not blocking it out of your memory, but no longer letting it influence your life. You can look back on something that had an impact on your life, but also brought you further. It does not matter whether it concerns a person you have lost or an event.
To really conclude, you have to look at the event again through the inside of your eyes and consider what it has given you, what has the event, the loss of a loved one, etc., brought you? And experience it, feel that it is good the way it is now.
At that moment the past is the past and consists of memories. The NOW is the NOW and you translate what the past has brought you and the future is where you are going, your personal journey. You should take your personal luggage there with you anyway.
Finally
These are not the most pleasant or easy processes, but in the end they yield you a lot and the chance of enjoying what you have NOW is many times greater. Even if we just try to give these impactful events a place, we have already taken a big step.