“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back.”
–Katherine Gascoigne
The happiest people in this world are those who live in the present and look forward to the future. The past is behind us, and we can never return to it. It is not possible to undo actions or events that we might now regret. Most of us have some pleasant memories from the past, as well as some that are not so pleasant. Those pleasant memories should be deposited in our memory banks and guarded just like we would any other treasure. But we must avoid cluttering up our memory banks with unpleasant memories. Such memories are of no value to us or to anyone else, and they should be discarded just like we discard other unwanted possessions.
This is, of course, much easier said than done, and most of us are probably not capable of totally discarding painful memories. But we must not dwell on them. No matter how bad our past has been, we still have today and tomorrow. We must make the most out of the present, and develop the habit of thinking positively about the future.
How do we keep from dwelling on the past? We do so by keeping so busy doing things in the present and planning things for the future that there is no time left for dwelling on the past. We have only so much mental energy, and if we spend it all on the present and the future, we can avoid thinking about the distant past. The recent past is a different story. If we have recently lost a loved one or had some other major loss, we need to grieve this loss. It is necessary to grieve any major loss as a part of the healing process so that we can get on with our lives. But after a reasonable period of grieving, it is time to put our loss behind us and get on with our lives.
Perhaps the rule should be to not look back very far into the past. Each major loss we have in life puts a weight on our shoulders. We must get rid of those weights from the distant past in order to make room for additional burdens that come along in the present. If we try to carry around all the burdens from the past, our bodies will break. Some of us seem to want to hold onto all our bad memories so we can tell others how bad our lives have been, or so we can feel sorry for ourselves. But other people have their own problems, and they do not want to hear about ours. And feeling sorry for ourselves is one of the worst things we can possibly do if we want to live happy and productive lives.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
