PAST
I read a novel titled "Timeline" by Michael Crichton. It deals with an entrepreneur whose company has learned how to transmit people to different times and places. The ideas underlining the technique are too difficult for me to begin to understand, involving quantum mechanics. (I was, however, comforted by Richard Feynman's comment that no one understands quantum mechanics.) The book was entertaining and I liked many of the characters, students and teachers and New Mexico doctors and the like. But there was a statement from the entrepreneur (whom I didn't like) that was meaningful to me: "[We are] ruled by [the past]. . . .[and] just as the present is ruled by the past, so is the future." The character is speaking of history and the role of many events and decisions in the past that determine our lives but the idea is applicable to our personal lives as well.
In so many ways, we let the past rule our lives and we convince ourselves that our futures are controlled by our pasts, that we are powerless to break free from the chains of our pasts. Sometimes we let habit control our lives. We do things the same way even after that way no longer works for us, is no longer best for us. Sometimes we believe that the past will continually repeat itself, that if we failed once in some endeavor we will always fail. Then we avoid the endeavor. In this way, the past rules because we allow it to rule.
It's this control of our lives that I'm trying to overturn, rebel against. What has happened to us in the past is important, shapes our lives, determines our hopes and dreams, our ways of looking at life. Yet it can be stultifying, oppressive, unnecessarily controlling. It can be ruinous to let the past rule without opposition, without resistance. I've made a conscious effort to understand my own past and its role in my life and to break away when I think it appropriate. But I have to admit that I regularly find myself doing what the past dictates, without thinking. I find myself acting and reacting in ways that are dysfunctional and inefficient because of things I recognize as coming from the past.
No one can escape the past completely, no one can recognize or avoid every aspect of the past's control over us. But we can seek understanding and rebel against the past when it leads us down the wrong path. In business and personal relationships alike, we can try to do what is right for us now, without regard to the past. We can overlook norms derived from past events that shackle us rather than help us. We can act differently if it helps us to live better lives. We can look forward to a future that is different from the past if we will only act to make a different future.
Try to think about the past only as guide to avoiding future mistakes, not as a dictator that controls our present and future. You'll feel better if you act to control your own life and break away from the past. Do what's right for you now, whatever happened in the past, whatever mistakes you may have made.
3-17-03 HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY
Home Page 2003 Archives 2002 Archives 2001 Archives 2000 Archives 1999 Archives