Leave the past

Leaving the past behind us, isn’t always an easy task. I mean, the past is what shaped us. We learned from our mistakes to improve our future decisions. The history of the events in our lives, have formed the way we think and act. It has ultimately made us into the person we are today, so we cant just exactly forget it.

The problem comes in when we react in the present, through something that happened in the past, usually in a negative way. These reactions cause harm to others leaving them confused and hurt. Example = I had a boyfriend that always left the ice tray out. This caused constant arguments and lead to a lot of tension in the relationship. Now if my husband even left the ice tray out once, just for a moment, I burst out in range, due to my past “trauma”. He, obviously, doesn’t understand why I react this way and this once again causes unwanted tension in the relationship.

Obviously this is a very light example of a very real issue and heavier topic. How do we keep the past, but also leave the past? Awareness is the answer. Once you know your “trigger” points you can take more caution, thinking before you act in a sense (we probably should be doing this anyway). Being aware of the bad without getting rid of the experience you have gained, is the best way to move forward.

Awareness leads to trust. Past events always seem to effect how we conduct ourselves in terms of relationships. The difficult part is finding the middle ground. Not to trust to easily, but also not shut down completely and never trust at all. To find the balance we need to learn from our failures and spot the dangers in our behavior. By no means should we all turn into these perfect robots, we must learn to be ok with our mistakes. Through trust we will continue to grow and evolve.

That takes us to honesty. We need to be realistic with ourselves and others, while taking our past experiences into consideration. There are some issues that needs to be addressed and we must be open about these to avoid the inevitable explosions. Burying the bad will only breed more bad things. Air out your grievances, trauma and fears and move forward with a lighter load.

Learning to leave the past where it belongs, but to carry the lessons with us, is a skill we must all master to enjoy our existence.

Till next time…