I Want It Both Ways

I get criticized a lot for my approach to the past.  I still live in (relatively) the same area that I grew up.  I'm doing the same job for a living that my mom and dad did.  I still believe a whole lot of things from my parents' religion.  I haven't been able to get interested in "moving on" to a different one, either.

   In many ways, I view my past as stuff that can still be figured out, even today.  Like, learning from it is a lifelong thing, with payoffs in the present.  Like it's not actually too late to become better by sifting through past stuff.  Like it's a puzzle.  Like thinking back and having better ideas as to how to handle things is something I can take into my current week.  Because I feel like I'm the same person as the guy in the past, to quite a degree. Same lessons to learn.  Same weaknesses, and a depressingly recurrent set of challenges in life.  I honestly believe that if I figure out stuff I repeatedly did poorly in the past, that next time, when encountering similar things in the future, I can do better.

    I believe in repentance.  Repent means "rethink."  Your brain adjusts so that, were it to be in the same position again, it would think differently and choose better.  I like to "put my new mindset into" my past and see what would have been possible.  And when I do things like write books, or talk about the past, or make videos about it, it's like I'm doing magic.  Like the past isn't in every way, really over.  Like it is all connected to what's going on now.  There is something potent about physically going back, years later, to somewhere things went well or ill, and having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, perspective and a host of similar experiences, some of which ended up going better.  Looking at it with new eyes/heart/brain.  It feels foundational.  Feels like I got better, deeper, stronger and wiser, in these intervening years.  Good for the confidence and the sense of purpose and direction. Good for hope.  And it feels like there's still stuff to be gleaned from back then, and taken into the rest of this year.

   The thing about childhood, and being raised in a specific culture (in my case, a religious one), is you don't understand much of it at the time.  So if you don't think about it now, with an adult brain, you never will understand it.  And it seems to me rather vital to learn whatever lessons are there to be learned.

   I've been noticing lately how some people on the Internet have a deep need to try to figure out What Happened To Them in their childhood, teens and twenties.  Some were raped.  Some made bad choices.  Some suffered horrible stuff that wasn't their fault.  Some became addicts.  Some left their birth culture and it was hard.  And all of these people want to get it all figured out.  And when they post stuff on the Internet, the other kind of people invariably try to shut it down.  Try to stop discussion on discussion panels.  Ungroup from groups. They say things like "Get a life!  Move on!  Stop wallowing in the past!  There's a whole future out there that has nothing to do with all of that crap that I refuse to think about."

   And they're not wrong. Problem is, they're not right either.

   With most human endeavours, there are two extremes.  One is dwelling on, or wallowing in the past.  You can be a middle-aged guy still regaling people with teenaged streetfights or football games you won.  Or you can be a middle-aged guy still talking about high school in a different way.  How much it sucked for you.  The alienation and loneliness.

   And you know what?  There's a place for that. Sometimes it's meeting up, years later, with someone you knew back in the day.  Sometimes it's because you've made self-expression/art of it.  Sometimes it happens on the Internet.

   But you can go too far and simply live in the past. Nothing new going on.  No new steps or challenges being taken.  And that's stagnation.

   The other extreme is try to live the rest of your life without ever having processed that stuff, really  Running from things you carry with you, as you run, in the back of your head.  Trying to outrun things that are inside your heart, right now.  Folly.

    But, not taken to quite that extreme, there's definitely a place for not wanting to hear about that stuff much anymore.  For needing a break. For needing to break new ground.

   And I want it both ways.  I want to order stuff from eBay that I used to have that I really liked.  I want to rebuy t-shirts I wore out years ago.  I want to download TV and movies I almost forgot about, and which gave me joy back in the day.  I want to make a video about how much 1991 sucked, and how someone hit me in the face with a beer bottle for no good reason one time, and have that story be a "dark patch" that the next part of the story has me climbing out of, into better things.

   But I also want to meet new people, go new places (like, Alaska) and see and do new things.  Or enjoy new old things.  Try new things.  New stories.  New faces.

   A guy on the Internet said something I liked, today, about going through your past and deciding what's baggage (weighing you down), and what's your luggage (that you don't leave home without.)  You're going to want to keep some stuff.  You're going to want to pick through other stuff and toss most of it.

   There's a thing I do with my physical stuff that I don't do with my emotional stuff: When I get a new place to live, I toss a whole bunch of my endless clutter into random, unsorted boxes, then close them, move, and don't open them for a long time.  I am almost afraid to look in them.  So I leave them for years, and then when I open them up, I find stuff I'd stupidly bought another of, because I "lost" it.  I find stuff I throw out immediately, because why do I need that?  I find stuff that brings back bad memories.  Other stuff that brings back good memories.  It's weird.   Seeing old stuff through new eyes.

   Anyway, that's all I've got on this subject.