by Jessica Kuzmier

Created on: November 04, 2010   Last Updated: June 02, 2011

Lately, I’ve been talking to people about this idea of dealing with the past.  For me, the topic is coming up a lot because in the last few months, my writing has gravitated towards memoir.  I’m surprised how charged the subject of the past is for some people.  I’ll say that I’m focusing on some era from earlier in my life, and all of the sudden I hear someone saying, oh forget about it!  It’s in the past!  It’s as though I said I want to go clean up nuclear waste for a hobby.  

The emotional charge that comes from this is interesting, because once anything happens, it is in the past.  The absolutism that comes from the visceral reaction of the statement, “It’s in the past!” seems to forget that if you should forget your past, you should not talk about the great movie you went to last week with your friends.  After all, “It’s in the past!”.  Celebrate your wedding anniversary?  Forget about it.  “It’s in the past!”.  Show pictures of your newborn?  Get over it!  The kid’s two weeks old already!  You probably are getting the picture.  Shutting the door completely on the past is not only silly, but is probably not what these people mean by reacting to it.  And, quite frankly, it is impossible to forget the past.  What basic function is memory for other than to help us make better decisions in the present?  You burn yourself on a stove, you remember not to do it again.  

What I think people mean by the “It’s in the past!” statement is that it is easy to dwell on the past without doing anything constructive about it.  Then your time travel becomes at best, an exercise in futility, and at worst, a guilt trip that causes you to self-destruct and sabotage your present and your future.  So to them, forget about what you did yesterday and focus on what you can do today.  The only problem is that perhaps without realizing it, your past decisions have created attitudes and habits that affect your decisions in the present.  I personally think it is a great idea to live well in the present moment.  But I’ll be honest: when I hear someone react to the idea of even looking at the past, as though there is some unwritten statute of limitations as to whether it is okay to talk about last week’s movie versus some other

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