Short post #4: The past

Short post #4: The past

The past is such a tricky thing. Sometimes is really cool to be nostalgic about things. Sometimes we regret past decisions and wish that we can change stuff.

There’s a saying that says, “The past remembers better than it lived.” I know from experience that this is very true. Sometimes, when I think about days gone by I wonder how much of what I’m remembering is just the good feels overwhelming the reality of how things actually were.

Conversely, I’ve heard it said that while the triumphs of the past become greater with passing years the defeats also become worse as time remembers them. I think that this maxim is simultaneously true and false.

Have you ever been around someone or a group of people who constantly live in their past? It’s often a pretty pitiful thing to behold because the stories are usually really good, but you get the sense that somehow there’s nothing better for them to look ahead to. A lot of times, people who are living in the past will complain about the present and how it’s nothing like the past. How there can be nothing like the past.

That seems like such a sad life to live.

As many great things that have happened to me in the past, I want to live with the hope that my tomorrows will bring me even more joy and that I’ll have eyes to see what is happening in the present day instead of constantly comparing it to what’s already happened. How can anything compete with a past that has all of the bad and awkward stuff redacted.