From "I'm Looking Through You" by Jennifer Finney Boylan
The world is full of Exes, of Priors, and Formers, people who can never quite live in the present... Over the years I'd seen plenty of people who had more serious cases of the Exes than I did... Art Garfunkel or Danny Bonaduce or Michael Dukakis- just to pick three at random- are seen as vaguely comic figures, people who are so completely defined by what the Used To Be that we are unwilling, even irritated, by the prospect of seeing them As They Are Now.
How is it, I wondered, that some people manage to integrate their lives and live in the moment, while others become stuck, become Exes, haunting their own lives like ghosts? How do we learn to Be Here Now (in teh words of Ram Dass, the former Richard Alpert)? How do we let go of the past, when its joys and injustices are such a large part of making us whoever it is we've become?
How is it, I wondered, that some people manage to integrate their lives and live in the moment, while others become stuck, become Exes, haunting their own lives like ghosts? How do we learn to Be Here Now (in teh words of Ram Dass, the former Richard Alpert)? How do we let go of the past, when its joys and injustices are such a large part of making us whoever it is we've become?