Dear My Mind #4

You and I, we like to dwell in the past. It has become one of our favorite pastimes, and I must say that we are quite good at it. No one can ponder over the past like us. But ultimately we are just hurting ourselves when we go back. So why do we keep doing it?

The past can have both good and bad parts about it, and sometimes it is easier to go to one over the other. On occasion we stumble upon the good stuff: scenes of joy that we have experienced over the years and memories that warm our heart. They bring us a sense of comfort that we can fall back on during tough times. They are like old friends, always there when you need them. Yet those happy memories don’t always come when we call. Instead they are replaced with the pain that we try so hard to ignore.

Dealing with the pain of the past is no small feat. They are our reminders of mistakes, failures, and missteps. They do nothing but amplify what went wrong and the fact that we have no control in changing what happened. We dwell on the possibilities of what could have gone differently, but there is nothing we can do about it. We are stuck in an endless circle of disorientation.

So I ask you Mind, why do we automatically go to these painful thoughts when there are plenty of happy ones available? Why must we focus on the negative when the positive is right there I front of us? There are many reasons why this could be the case, but there is one in particular that I think sums up our situation. And the answer may surprise even you.

Mind, I think in some weird wat we have grown comfortable in the painful past. Now hear me out, I think I’m going somewhere. I think that there is a part of our psyche that has become used to the pain that we have experienced, so we go back to that place instead of venturing into the positive. We are afraid to step out and leave the pain behind us because it is all that we know. Our pain has become an unhealthy refuge that we turn to. But this trend needs to stop if we want to live our best life.

Yes, there is stuff in our past that we need to deal with, but we are not bound to that which makes us feel bad. We have the chance to take hold of the positive things in life and use them as fuel to power through. We have a lot of life ahead of us and we can’t spend that time focusing on what has already happened. Past pain is not our home anymore. We are now seekers of good things and positivity. The past is the past and it must stay there. Mind, let us not continue to live in the pain that has plagued us, but instead live in the now.

Let us live. Period.