You Can't Run from Your Past

How many times have we heard that the past is the past. That the past is a thing to be forgotten and left behind in order to move on. If something happened to us in the past that was holding us back from living the life we wanted then it was simple to leave it behind. College was a fresh start, somewhere we could runaway to have a new identity, new friends, new memories. Distracting ourselves is also a useful tool. Keeping ourselves busy with work, drinking, or hobbies are all ways to avoid the past. We leave no room to remind us of those painful emotions of death, failure, or past relationships. But no matter how hard we can try to leave it behind us, the only way we can truly learn from the past is to face it.

Remember Your Roots

I often look back at my childhood and wonder what on God's green earth I was thinking. How did a social outcast who hunted squirrels and hid in leaves for attention during middle school recess turn out so normal. It's times like these I remind myself that only a divine being could change my fate from possible mass murdering psychopath, to a gregarious blogger. There are many things I regret about my past and wish I had done differently but my belief system is not one of them. Often times we forget the views we held as children were more pure than the ones we hold now.

Who here thought to themselves as kids, "I am definitely going to smoke cigarettes when I grow up." Probably no one. As we grow up we make more excuses for compromising our values. Psychology calls this cognitive dissonance which is defined as discomfort within an individual who holds a belief and performs a contradictory action. When we can't change what we do, we change how we feel about it. Smoking suddenly goes from the worst thing in the world to not so bad.