I can't judge the future without looking at the mistakes I've made in the past. For those who can't remember the past they're bound to repeat it. Life can be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. We all live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn from the past.
The past will never tell us what to do but what to avoid. Decision comes from experience, and great decision comes from bad experiences. We all have had bad and horrible past memories. But what we be if we didn't have those memories to learn by and have taught us. Those past experiences we need to grow by and become a better and a much more knowledgeable person. To get through life we need to be aware of all we have encountered throughout our lives. And remember we will never stop learning and making more memories to learn by.
Living in the past is a dull and lonely business, looking back strains the neck muscles, causes you to bump into people not going your way. The worst thing someone can try to do is cling on to something that's gone, or try to recreate it. We need to move on. Keep walking forward through life not backwards unless you want to relive those mistakes made again. I don't!
Looking back we should have no regrets. The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it again and again in your mind. Would you watch a movie over and over again on TV. Why watch that past experience repeat going on in your own movie theater in your head over and over. Whatever the past gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know. The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. Your past is always going to be the way it was. Stop trying to change it. Whatever with the past is gone, the best is yet to come.
When one door closes another always opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us. When I am anxious, it is because I am living in the future; when I'm depressed, it's because I'm living in the past.
Visualize yourself standing on a mountain. Your entire life lies out there in the distance below. Before you move on, pause and review the past; learning, remembering the joys, the victories and the sorrows. Everything it took to bring you here, where you are today. The past is never completely lost. However how much the pain, or the guilt or the damage. Your harmful memories are the foundation that has sculptured you into this person with knowledge and intellect through experiences learned. What you are today and what you will be tomorrow are because of what you have been.
