The past is such a strange place. It’s a place of fuzzy avenues and hazy storefronts that we walk through often, but never fully see. Scientists estimate that we might only remember past events with as little as 20% accuracy. Can you imagine? Only 20% of what you remember is real? The rest is filled in by historical narrative and the telling and retelling of the same folklore. Regardless, it has such strong claws that dig into us and seem to never let go. Our pasts can lock us into brooding unforgiveness for people who have wronged us. Critical beliefs about ourselves are anchored back there in the murky memories. Relationships lost, and incomplete encounters haunt us with whispers of what could have been; what we should have said.
For being so inaccurate, it sure can be powerful.
How do we deal with all this?
Based on what I have seen work, I offer a couple of ideas. (remember, they are only ideas and not meant to be specific instructions for your specific situation. If you want those, come see me. )
Educational inventory.
We are experts at meaning making. When something bad, frustrating or inexplicable happens to us, you can see the wheels start to turn in order to help something make sense. “Oh that car accident I was in as a kid really changed the way I think about death and dying.” “If my first husband hadn’t have been so cruel and heartless I might take for granted how great my current husband is.” “I needed cancer to show me how strong I was.”
This is not a dysfunction or denial. This is beautiful. We might not always remember specifically what happened, but we know who we are now. We can look to the good and the bad we carry with us and link it to some event in the past and turn our memories into lessons that stick with us to this day. We are who we are today because of the culmination of events that happened back there in the haze.
Letter writing.
I do this one all the time. Write a letter to the person you struggle to forgive. Write a letter to you when you were five. Write a letter to your future self. Write a letter to someone you really wronged and ask forgiveness. The idea isn’t to mail them. You don’t have to. In some cases you can’t. In some cases you shouldn’t. Putting pen to paper, or feverishly typing on a keyboard gives you a chance to say the unsaid, to finish the encounter.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some people out there who do need to send the letter. There are lots of people in my life who have really hurt me. If they sent me a letter of apology today I’d still be able to cry the same tears of relief today as I would have twenty years ago. (You can give it a go at jennifer.moore.mft@gmail.com if you feel so lead.) There is something to be said for making amends.
Rewriting the old story.
If the memories are so narrowly accurate anyway, whats the harm in taking a few helpful creative liberties? No I don’t mean revisionist history here. We can’t change what has happened. But we can look back at old events with wiser eyes. For example we could keep beating ourselves up for dropping out of college, or we could look back and realize the kid who dropped out was practically a baby. Maturity was not their strong suit. Their biggest worry was if they had enough hairspray to get their bangs high enough. What did they know about careers and finance? They wanted to be free, and they chose a path. It was actually brave in a lot of ways. And hey, no school debt, yes?
I’ll admit, this one takes a little practice. It also requires a lot of grace, kindness, nonjudgmental thoughts, and sometimes help from a qualified professional.
Accept what you might not know.
Here are a few things you might not know about that thing that happened in the past. You might not know what it was like to be around you. You might not know everything that person was going through. You might not know if changing your actions would have changed the outcome. You might not know some miscellaneous tiny detail that actually completely dominated why that thing happened. In fact, if you only remember twenty percent of what actually happened, and probably only 4% of the observable information contributing to the event and a microscopically sized portion of all the knowable information not to mention zero percent of the unknowable information (whoa we went quantum there) then how can you base your opinions and beliefs about yourself and others on those memories?!
Here’s the bottom line. You aren’t always in charge of what happens to you or around you. But you do hold the pen that writes the moral of these stories. And the moral is why we tell them in the first place, no?
Final truth, You are not what has happened to you. You are not what you have done. You are a being of endless, measureless, and astounding possibilities in the right here and now. You are always capable of surprising yourself with something completely new. And that is something worth writing a letter to the past about.