Contemplation: Past to Present

[tashiro]

Something I need to try to develop more - my ability to let the past be the past, and focus on the present, when it comes to people and what they have done.  In this vein, I will try to accept my personal enemy.  If I encounter them again, and they wish to return to FFa, I will make the allowance for it, and try to accept that all the ill will I

Comments

[shiftercat]

Bear in mind that something else people don't like is being told, or even having it implied, "You shouldn't feel this thing that you're feeling."

And, well, there's a reason why certain feelings get tagged "negative emotions": anger, grief, fear, resentment, hatred, etc. It's because they're either not considered socially acceptable, or only considered acceptable under very specific circumstances. So the person who's experiencing these things often gets made to feel bad about feeling them in the first place.

So anything that might come off as "you should just stop feeling that emotion now" is likely to set them off, even if you didn't mean it that way.

[marinredwolf]

Long post is long.

But I seem to remember commenting on this when you were discussing Shinto. Your answer at the time was "well, things done in the past don't matter in a spiritual sense, but they still might in a temporal/societal one."

I think a lot of people have trouble "letting go" of the past, yet still learning from it - or mistaking "learning from" with "clinging to" and vice versa. In some cases, that may be a fine line.

Viewing your little exercise from a personal perspective, I'm hard pressed to think of a person, group, or act that infuriates me by its existence in my past. I don't tend toward anger in that regard. There are, however, individuals that have an almost-magical way of setting me off when I see their behavior. That's a very present reaction, though I'll admit I might not feel so strongly if it didn't also seem to be recurring.

[lord_sauron]

I find there is a simple personal policy: Leave the past in the past, live in the present. If a person repeats the patters of the past that plainly lead to a serious problem, politely confront them over, mentioning that in the past the behavior you see now has led to your feelings about them becoming negative. If they can "repent" (or whatever you see as best in the case) then its plain its a problem they struggle with. If they do so regardless of your intervention, then its time you accept they are not the kind of person you can have in your life.
There is a loophole, in that if you have known someone for years and they do the same hurtful things again and again, those actions are on purpose, and the person is never to be trusted again, no matter what. Once a line has been crossed too many times, it is a selected behavior pattern, not an accidental reaction.