The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.
William Faulkner, from his 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun.
The past is much more interesting to me, and utterly vital to recall and re-learn from now in old age. I’ve always looked back, but memories of failure and personal inward tragedy, more often than not, cropped up. Now the tyranny of past misfortune and bad choices and decisions, while never gone from memory, have been finally subdued in old age, or at least tamed so that they no longer burn as hot and lash the fragile ego with it’s best
best forms of punishment.
The good I accomplished and the love of dear friends and family, rises well above all the strife and torment of decades past. So much above it that a calm has come upon me that I never had before.
This “calm” perhaps can also be considered the numbing effect of time passing and old age encroaching.
People might say, “You live too much I the past.” When they say that there are a few problems as I see it. For one thing, you can’t be anywhere that’s not the present moment. The past is only a moment ago and at the same time, decades ago. What isn’t in the “now” are memories, and yet past experiences and the memories of them have made this present moment, and all future such moments, possible.
Although we can’t go back and live in the past or re-create it, we can recall it as often as we want and as long as our brains preserve memories and allow us to retrieve it, even if they are diminished or altered by time. Without that mental capacity, the brain and mind can find themselves at war with dementia or other forms of cognitive impairment. The progression of that beyond what might commonly be thought of as age-related, leads to varying degrees of loss of those aspects of ourselves that rely on memory to keep a stable ego and sense of self. The soul survives all of this and lifts us out of these mortal coils.
A wise Southern writer of some note and consequence, and advanced in age as I myself am, commented to me recently, “I’ve come to realize that I live in the past. It’s far more interesting that right now and a bit of a mystery. Few survive who recall what I recall…”
Our brief written dialog continued. The writer said, “Most of my past mistakes were due to immaturity and bad luck, notwithstanding the sheer stupidity of some of my decisions. I’ve learned to bury my past now. Many of the people who centered in my troubles no longer exist in my mind. Everything seems temporary, even more so as I age. It’s not a bad feeling when you realize just how many people never mattered as much as you thought they did.”
These observations prompted me to think of all the reasons not to dwell on the past, and then put those aside. But “bury” the past so that it never comes back to haunt or torment us?I don’t think that’s possible. If you bury your past, you acknowledge it’s dead. I want to take its lessons to heart and I believe we never stop learning from our mistakes and stupid decisions, whatever the reasons, causes or lack of complete responsibility for them we might feel.
Most of my awful job mistakes and decisions I can honestly say were made as a result of the consequences of perpetually running after, and seeking, some idealized job or career, and an end to my fumbling lack of a workable plan for the future, (if such a thing is even possible), which in turn left me desperate to take any job that was offered to me, and which I did, time and again. That happened so often I guess it was Fate. It was meant to be. It made me quite humble as I often dreaded making decisions, as sensed the winds of misfortune were about to buffet me again. But things worked out in the end, despite having nothing even resembling a plan, only pursuing what I enjoyed doing or knew I was good at. .
In my younger days, job hunting was always an ordeal, although If I got an interview, I did well and often got the job. So that all seemed good, except for the fact that taking some of the jobs I briefly had was the end result of being alone with fear of failure, and then after leaving the job, loss of dignity and self-worth. As a life-long single person living a solitary life, a job and career were everything, sad to say. When I succeeded, life was glorious. When I failed, the black dog of depression would rear its ugly head.
Now as I dwell on the past writing these wirds, it’s no longer something I feel guilty about, or consider a non-productive waste of time.
I may appear to “live in the past,” but it’s because I thankfully still can return there when I want, or can still be dragged there almost involuntarily.
Everyone of a certain age has the very real possibility of losing all or part of the “self,” or the “person” that resides in our memories of the past, as long as we can recall them and “know” this person I perceive as myself. I might some day not remember anything about the recent, mid-life, and distant past, as occurs with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. I could slowly fade away.
As a caregiver for for my mother for 12 years, she who suffered with vascular dementia, I saw first-hand and up close, what that terrible brain condition does to a person. But I also saw how completely intact her soul and life spirit were, up until the end.
I have no apologies for “living in the past,” if you wiIl, because I am still able to remember much from those days, months and years long gone. I write about it often, always seeking new insights about why life unfolded the way it did, and how and why certain events and experiences transpired over the course of a lifetime.
My past is my “self.” The fact that I can remember so much is a miracle in itself. The person I am at this moment is the end result of that long past. It never goes away, even if we try mightily to bury the parts of it that we formerly recoiled from and which often as not involved certain people we allowed to have too much influence or control over us.
I say, don’t pathologically dwell in the past, but instead, calmly look back and learn from the past, even in old age when it’s so much easier to do so.
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