» Let Go of the Past

Have you ever watched children playing together?

Often they start off happily enough but after a while things start to go wrong. Maybe they both want to play with the same toy at the same time, maybe they both want to set the rules of the game. Whatever it is, they hit a point when they are no longer able to play successfully, so they part.

Parting may only mean turning their backs on each other, rather than actually going apart, but in effect it’s giving them some mental space from each other. They have time to focus on themselves and their own actions without thinking about anyone else.

If they stay in the same room, chances are this ‘time out’ may not last too long. After no more than a few minutes they may make tentative gestures to one another, non-verbal hints that they’re ready to get back together. And soon they’re playing happily again, as if nothing had happened.

And usually this is the case as far as the children are concerned. As an observer we know something did happen. We know there was a situation that caused them to break apart. But they have let this flow past them, out of their minds.

As we get older we seem less able to do this. We seem to need to hold on to the hurts and slurs. When we have a disagreement with someone, or something goes wrong in our lives, we need to pick it to pieces, to investigate and recreate in our minds, to rehearse different scenarios, maybe to apportion blame. Sadly the last thing we’re likely to do is put it fully behind us and ‘let bygones be bygones’.

The danger of this is that we carry this baggage around with us and, like, the stereotypical cavernous woman’s handbag that holds everything bar the kitchen sink, we can pull it out whenever we need it. So next time we see the person we disagreed with, rather than starting afresh we quickly recall the recent hurts, and our attitude and behavior is based on these.

Maybe we’ll try to avoid him or perhaps we’ll try to slip a pertinent remark into the conversation, just to make sure he knows we haven’t forgotten what happened.

If we have to work with her and the problem was about a previous work assignment, maybe we’ll feel the need to bring it up ‘just to make sure we don’t have that happening again’.

Depending on how the event was perceived and remembered by the other person, we may find we create a hostile situation where none needed to exist. Or maybe there’s embarrassment over a genuine error that they hoped was now in the past. Perhaps there will be ‘point scoring’: our opening volley is met with a reply of ‘Oh that; surely you’re not still letting that bother you’, making it clear that we’re the one who holds onto, and worries about things.

And sometimes we can meet genuine bewilderment from the other person. They’re still able to use that childhood knack of putting something completely behind them. There are no negative feelings attached to the experience, it’s still in their memory but filed away with all the other miscellaneous stimuli they receive, rather than in their ‘must remember and re-use in anger’ drawer. So when we bring it up they honestly don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. And if we pursue the matter chances are we’ll just make fools of ourselves and feel even worse about it all.

That childhood skill is a good one to learn. Life shouldn’t be made up of worries about things that really don’t matter, about imagined insults, about missed opportunities or misinterpreted ‘wrongs’.

Start practicing now:

Next time you encounter someone with whom you think you have some ‘baggage’ act as if you don’t. Make a fresh start; treat them like someone you’re meeting for the first time. Forget all those preconceptions and past impressions. Give them another chance and they’ll most likely respond in the same way.