The Past

There are more ways then one to bring up the past. When we bring up the past we are giving it power over the now. Most people allow the past to pollute their present without even realizing it. The past is far more then the verbal story that people tell. The past is a feeling people carry inside them. The past is an experience people look through. For those enmeshed with the past it has become a part of themselves and removing it is more complex then amputating a body part. For some the past is a cancerous limb attached to there soul that spreads to many aspects of their life. The past destroys people slowly by sabotaging their relationships because as people peer through the past it causes them to make assumptions about people and situations. The past causes people to expect history to repeat itself and in doing this they often create a self fulfilling prophesy. Those severely enmeshed with the past will keep retelling the same old story and in doing so they keep reliving that story over and over again. Some people are enmeshed with a negative past, while some are enmeshed with a positive past. 

War veterans will often retell a story in which they were the victim of war, while others retell a story where they were the hero of war. Instead of living life now those enmeshed with the past insist on going back to retell the same story over and over again. Why do people keep retelling these stories? The people who tell these stories want you to know they are a victim or they want you to know that they are hero. The people who keep retelling these stories are giving you hints about who they are by telling you who they were, so that you will see them the same way they see themselves. People who spend hours in their mind retelling story after story they are defining the stories and allowing the stories to define them. If you want a first hand glimpse of people who live in the past all you have to do is find a place where alcoholics hang out. Misery loves company because the misery becomes invisible in the company of misery. Spiritually speaking evil is the act of concealing the truth… hiding the bars of the cage… pretending to be free.

People who live in the past live inside a cage and the presence of free people makes their cage painfully visible. Retelling the stories is a way to ask see my cage… see my cage… do you see my cage now? Retelling the stories is a way to ask do you see my cage? When faced with freedom a person living in the past feels obligated to retell the stories because once again the mountain they face becomes painfully visible in their path. Sometimes people start retelling old stories when they are about to say goodbye or flat out run away from their feelings or run from the people who cause them to relive these feelings. Living in the past poisons relationships by replacing intimacy in the now with poison from yesterday. These people keep repainting, redefining, sabotaging and anticipating history to repeat itself. If you try to introduce reality into the picture they paint you will cause them to draw a sword. The only way to have a relationship with a person in a cage is to not love them. How could you love someone and yet still let them live in a cage? Relationships between people caged by the past and free people usually will not work unless caged people are willing to acknowledge the cage they live inside. The best thing you could do for people who live in the past is to draw a boundary by respectfully asking them to not talk about the past. When you draw a boundary they may run, but you keep the door wide open… you make the running about them… you make them take responsibility for walking away by simply keeping your door open. When you keep your door open, you refuse them the opportunity to play the victim. 

I hope I have given people the opportunity to rise above and see a new perspective.