Don't Trip on Memory Lane

One of my oldest and best friends - we'll call him Ryan - remembers EVERYTHING.

He remembers his address from 2nd grade. What his neighbor yelled from the lawn when he was riding his bike around the neighborhood. The encore song by the opening band of that one concert we saw in 1994. What his friend was wearing and what they drank that one specific time they went out. The syllabus of that fiction class he took in college.

Me, on the other hand? My memory consists mainly of vague feelings and senses (happy/sad/scared/mad/content) punctuated by a few key scenes that are vivid and include specific detail. 

Most of it, though, is a blur.

I used to compare my memory to his and think I must be broken in some way. What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I remember the very first Christmas present I ever asked Santa for, or what the wrapping paper looked like when I opened it? Sure, I can still remember the lava lamp in the living room of the neighbors that used to babysit me, but how helpful is that? Who needs a memory of someone else’s lava lamp?!

This bothered me, off and on, for over 15 years. I even feared there might be something medical going on (mostly because I’m a hypochondriac who Googles symptoms and comes away convinced I obviously have the very worst and most rare diseases that I otherwise would’ve never even heard of except for the internet).

Then I started the journey that resulted in me becoming a life coach. And on that journey, I came to understand that the past doesn't exist.

And once I accepted that there is no past -- there is only now -- I realized my memory is perfectly fine. The things I do remember are in the archives. If I learned something from past events, they’ve been incorporated into who I am, already. The things I don't remember are gone. And neither what I do remember or don't remember has any influence on what I know to be true today.

For some people, the idea that the past doesn’t exist is a terrifying notion. I suspect, for my friend “Ryan,” contemplating the idea would lead to some sort of denial-driven meltdown. But when you feel the truth of it, it is incredibly freeing. 

It’s freeing when you realize that nothing you’ve been through, nothing you’ve done, has to impact how you choose to live in the present moment. And, even better? It means you don’t have to feel shame for anything that happened to you in the past. 

Because. The past. Isn’t. Real. 

How can you feel ashamed of something that’s not real? 

So many people live with shame and regret for things they did or said or didn’t do, or things that were done or said or not done to them. But you don’t need to. In fact, if you look at it another way, it's actually kind of insane to feel bad about something that doesn’t even exist. Right?

The past happened, yes, but it no longer exists. When it happened, it was now. As you read this, now is already the past. Neither you nor I have a time machine to get back to it. We can never be in the past again. We can never feel it again, touch it. We can’t revise it. It’s a non-thing.

Knowing that - are you holding onto something in your past that's holding you back now?