Experience
I'll just launch right into this one. Some people feel that you should forget the past, that when something goes wrong in your life, when you make a "bad" decision or do something embarrassing, you should simply put it behind you and move on. Well, much as some of us may not like to admit it, the past does define who we are. We may go through incredible changes, we may become completely different people over the course of as little as five or ten years, but our past actions are still important. They provide a reference point.
Everything is about context. Without your past, your life has no meaning. This may seem too abstact an example, but say you're floating through a vaccuum at an incredibly high speed. How do you know you're moving? There's no air to hit your face, nothing for you to see, essentially no reference point. It's as if you aren't moving at all. That is, the fact that you're moving means absolutely nothing. It only gains significance when you are moving with regard to something, when you have a way to judge the distance you've traveled. All movement, all measure of distance, is relative.
Examining the past is the only way we can establish a context for our lives. That means all of the past, even if some of the memories still sting. So what if you made a bad decision? So what if you had an experience that left you bruised and in pain? Having those kinds of experiences is important for two reasons. First, it gives you context for the times you make the good decision, for the times you feel joy and elation. Being able to feel both joy and grief is healthy because each provides a reference point for the other. They are intrinsically connected. True love and true hate are so easily switched precisely because they are so closely related. It is important to recognize polar opposites because they provide the reference for all the shades of gray you can experience between them.
Secondly, every experience we have teaches us more about the world we live in. We paint an ever-growing reproduction of the world in our consciousnesses, and grow by the actions we take. Any event, no matter how horrific or awe-inspiring, has something to teach us. And I don't mean factually, I mean in the sense of wisdom. Science and facts can only take you so far- sure, love may be caused by the firing of certain synapses in the brain or the release of certain hormones... but that is not what gives it worth. The importance of something like love is that we have it, and that we learn from it, not that it is a function of certain chemical processes. Saying love (or anything else) is caused by a series of facts is an absurd way of trying to teach you about it; you do not ride a bike by reading a manual. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that both good experiences and bad give our lives meaning and let us know we live. Without realizing the full range of experiences you live in a world dominated by second-hand, less-valued information.
To link this back to the idea of the past, however- you cannot live entirely in the moment. Experiencing great joy or great loss can be overwhelming. Yet what is the point of experiencing these things without a reference? What is the point of venturing out and becoming bruised when you forget about it the next day and repeat it? This is not to say that living in the moment is a bad thing, far from it. Similarly, you should not live obsessed with the past. What I mean is that each new experience should simply be looked at in context of the past. You don't need to know where you're going, but you do need to know where you've come from and how your present circumstances relate to that. And this requires that we bear in mind the past, and remember that in one sense or another it still lives with us as a reference to the present.
Sorry if all of that was disjointed... writing at 3AM will do this to you.
Everything is about context. Without your past, your life has no meaning. This may seem too abstact an example, but say you're floating through a vaccuum at an incredibly high speed. How do you know you're moving? There's no air to hit your face, nothing for you to see, essentially no reference point. It's as if you aren't moving at all. That is, the fact that you're moving means absolutely nothing. It only gains significance when you are moving with regard to something, when you have a way to judge the distance you've traveled. All movement, all measure of distance, is relative.
Examining the past is the only way we can establish a context for our lives. That means all of the past, even if some of the memories still sting. So what if you made a bad decision? So what if you had an experience that left you bruised and in pain? Having those kinds of experiences is important for two reasons. First, it gives you context for the times you make the good decision, for the times you feel joy and elation. Being able to feel both joy and grief is healthy because each provides a reference point for the other. They are intrinsically connected. True love and true hate are so easily switched precisely because they are so closely related. It is important to recognize polar opposites because they provide the reference for all the shades of gray you can experience between them.
Secondly, every experience we have teaches us more about the world we live in. We paint an ever-growing reproduction of the world in our consciousnesses, and grow by the actions we take. Any event, no matter how horrific or awe-inspiring, has something to teach us. And I don't mean factually, I mean in the sense of wisdom. Science and facts can only take you so far- sure, love may be caused by the firing of certain synapses in the brain or the release of certain hormones... but that is not what gives it worth. The importance of something like love is that we have it, and that we learn from it, not that it is a function of certain chemical processes. Saying love (or anything else) is caused by a series of facts is an absurd way of trying to teach you about it; you do not ride a bike by reading a manual. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that both good experiences and bad give our lives meaning and let us know we live. Without realizing the full range of experiences you live in a world dominated by second-hand, less-valued information.
To link this back to the idea of the past, however- you cannot live entirely in the moment. Experiencing great joy or great loss can be overwhelming. Yet what is the point of experiencing these things without a reference? What is the point of venturing out and becoming bruised when you forget about it the next day and repeat it? This is not to say that living in the moment is a bad thing, far from it. Similarly, you should not live obsessed with the past. What I mean is that each new experience should simply be looked at in context of the past. You don't need to know where you're going, but you do need to know where you've come from and how your present circumstances relate to that. And this requires that we bear in mind the past, and remember that in one sense or another it still lives with us as a reference to the present.
Sorry if all of that was disjointed... writing at 3AM will do this to you.