Looking To The Past

It's human nature to be afraid of change. And I think we become afraid of change because most of us are creatures of habit, and most of us like to stay in a little bubble. In that bubble we have everything that we need, we have our comfort zone, and our comfort zone is where we feel safe. And there's nothing wrong with having a comfort zone, it's natural and healthy. In a sense, our comfort zones keep us safe, they keep us grounded, and they might even help us make choices that are right for us. I say this because at the end of the day, the ones that know us the best are ourselves. People often say that we are the protagonists' of our own lives, and they would be right. I never truly understood what it meant when I was younger, but I think I do now. No matter how often we feel like our lives don't belong to us, that we're incapable of making decisions that we want to make, so long as we take care of ourselves, things will fall into place. The thing is that life is utterly unpredictable, and it's no use making plans, because more often than not, they'll never pan out the way that we wish they would. My mum used to tell me that she had wished that either myself or my sister would end up going into computer science, but neither me or my sister are inclined that way. That was a plan that my mum wanted, she hoped would pan out, and it didn't.

When things don't go the way that we want them to, it can often feel disorientating and confusing, especially if it's something that we worked so hard to get. I often feel this way when I apply for jobs, sometimes I spend weeks on an application just for everything I wanted to come crashing down by an automated email. And that's deeply disappointing, and it can make you bitter. I believe that people are afraid of the future. At least, I know I am. And I think that because people are afraid of the future, they cling to the past. There's nothing wrong with being nostalgic, the problem starts when we can't let go of it. When we spend more time thinking about the past, thinking about our past actions and decisions rather than being in the here and now, that's where the problem comes from. You can see it now with retro things being all the rage, and companies capitalising on nostalgia. The problem is, this kind of nostalgia only ever shows the good things. It doesn't show all the problems that came with it.

When we look to the past, when we reminisce, even without realising it, we're looking at it with rose tinted glasses. We're not accepting everything that happened, and we're not truly appreciating the experience, because our brain has cherry picked the moments that made us feel good, or the moments that made us feel not so good. And it's interesting to think how many moments along the way we forget, because over the course of a lifetime, we make countless memories, and it's obviously impossible to remember everything; so I've always found it so interesting to see what you remember and what you forget. It's also fascinating to see how two people can remember the same event completely differently, because for them, they would have learned and experienced something that we didn't.

Last night, my boyfriend and I discussed our recollections of our respective first kisses. Now my first kiss was not something spectacularly bad or something that would make fireworks fizz. It was just okay. I remember at the time, thinking that I was a late bloomer to have my first kiss because I was about fifteen, and even though I didn't have any proof, it felt like everyone else had already had this experience and I was left trailing behind. Most importantly, I remember thinking, 'what if nobody ever kisses me?' What if nobody ever found me attractive enough to want to kiss me? Then I thought about the kiss itself, what if I hated it and I was expected to do it for the rest of my life with whoever I ended up dating? What if I was a bad kisser? What if I was the story of someone's awful first kiss? But regardless, I recounted the experience of my first kiss, and I was struck by how little I actually remembered. There were times when the timeline got confused in my head, or times when I wasn't exactly sure how something happened or what someone said. And it made me sad. It made me sad because I've always supposed that your first kiss is such a monumental experience that it's something you're supposed to remember forever. That the clarity of the experience is something that will always remain in ultra HD. And I know that by doing this, I'm playing into the romanticisation of youth and being a teenager, and that really, in the grand scheme of things, your first kiss really isn't that important, and we hold such a candle to these experiences as if kissing people is the be all and end all of a relationship with someone. Now that I'm older I can understand that ins't the case at all, and there's so many different ways you can show to affection to people in ways that aren't just physical.

There's nothing wrong with remembering a moment fondly, or thinking about how much you've changed since then or how other people may have changed, or even what you would do differently if you had the chance. The problem stems from how much pressure our society puts on us to learn everything when we're teenagers and young adults. We're meant to have the best time of our lives whilst we're young, to get all of the exploring out of our system, to go and see everything there is to see so that then we can settle down into a career and have a quiet life. But that isn't how it works. Many people that I know that are my age, don't have the liberty to go exploring or to go backpacking through Thailand for a year because financially it isn't feasible. And when we can't do these amazing incredible once in a life time experiences, it feels like we're wasting opportunities. We're letting our life pass us by whilst we do nothing of any consequence.

This is not the case.

When it comes to nostalgia, or when it comes to touching base with our past and our past selves, there's a very fine line. In the past, I've clutched onto experiences and memories because I was scared of what would happen if I let go. I was scared that if I let go of the experience in order to make space for something new, it would mean that that period in my life was something that I didn't treasure. This is not true. We can still fondly look back on things, but we don't have to clutch at them. Which is exactly what I used to do, I used to be like an octopus with its suction cups wrapped around their prey, and whilst you're suffocating the past, you're in a grey area. You're in an area where you're not quite in the future yet, and you're not quite in the past. You exist in what could essentially be no man's  land. The reason why it's no man's land is because there's nobody else there. It's just you. And in order for us to be happy and healthy, we need to get out of no man's land. We need to go where the people are. By refusing to let go of the past, we're sabotaging ourselves.

This is something that I've looked at in therapy, which is past circumstances. One of the things we focus on is that the past is well, the past. We talk about how when we cling to it, when we allow it to manifest and take over other elements of our life, we're letting our brain panic. We're letting our brain think that the one bad experience you have is now what's happening all over again, when in reality, it's a new moment, it's a new time and the mistakes of the past are not doomed to happen again. It sometimes feels like it's a constant battle to remind ourselves that the past is not the future. The people that hurt us or the people that we hurt aren't things that are going to happen over and over again. By accepting that the past happened, and that events from the past shape us and who we become, we can free ourselves of its shackles. The past has no power over us, not unless we let it.

Life can begin when we want it to. It's easy to think and believe that we've peaked or that the best part of our lives have already passed us by when it isn't the case. Life isn't a race of who can get the most done in the shortest amount of time, it isn't a competition, we shouldn't pit against ourselves because we think that we're more worthy of something that someone else is. I don't want to point the finger at society and say that it's responsible, but society plays a huge rule in how we live our lives and society unfortunately makes us believe that everything is some sort of race. It's a race to find your 'dream job', it's a race to find a job, it's a race to get the best holiday deal, it's a race to success. You see all of these influencers and YouTubers' who make their living in front of a camera, and it's easy to feel like we aren't as important as them, that their career means more because they're more successful.  It might sound like a cliche to say, but life happens to everyone at a different pace. And sometimes it might feel like you get stuck, and you're stuck in a rut, but it's worth reminding yourself that it will pass. Life naturally ebbs and flows, and sometimes it really just a waiting game. And that's okay.

When it comes to bitterness and regret, that's a slippery slope. Because, of course there will be times when we hurt people and when they hurt us, and that sort of hurt can be really difficult to let go of, and I've often felt like I've latched onto pain and hurt for far too long because I didn't know how to let go. And sometimes, it can be difficult, especially because we might not have the words to describe how we feel. Sometimes, when an experience is something new to us, we will not have the vocabulary to describe how it made us feel. And that is both okay, and not okay. Obviously we should be taught as we grow up how to say that someone has hurt us, or how to accept forgiveness or how to say that we did something wrong. Maybe I'll sound like a pessimist but I don't think our society does enough to help us get in touch with our feelings. Straight from children, we're taught that we shouldn't cry, that if we're upset about something, there should be a reason. However, that doesn't work because sometimes (and by sometimes I mean a lot of the time), our emotions don't make sense and we should be encouraged to feel and explore them however we need to. And when we feel like the opportunity to express ourselves was taken away from us, we'll cling onto the experience. We'll go home and think of countless things we would say, and how then they'll understand. And it's tempting to think of these fantasises where you finally have the chance to unleash all of your thoughts and finally put that person in their place, and whilst they can make us feel good, they aren't necessarily the best way to move forward from that experience. I remember when I was a teenager and things that I didn't like happened to me, when I look back on it now, it was obvious that I didn't have the words to describe that I was unhappy. And it makes me sad to think how much more I could have been understood if there had been an emphasis on getting in touch with your emotions, in trying to understand their complexities and to then have that power to express that with another person.

I'd like to come back to how much people romanticise being young. I saw this first hand when I was applying to go to university. Almost everyone older in my life, and other speakers who came to school to convince you to go to university all exclaimed the same almost cult like thing: "It's the best three years of your life." Imagine that sort of pressure on a young eighteen year old who's not only moving away from home for the first time, but who's still figuring out who they are and what they want, and needs to acclimate to making new friends and learning how to do their own laundry, and then you put that on them. You put this insane amount of pressure that they need to have fun all the time. That every second of university has to be moments of fun that cannot ever be replicated. No wonder nobody can replicate that. It's impossible. When I went to university, my first month was pretty miserable, and I felt like I was doing something wrong, and sometimes I still can't get out of that mindset that I did something wrong, and why wasn't I having fun? Everyone had told me that I was meant to be having fun, so what was I doing wrong? Don't get me wrong, when I settled into my course and I made a group of friends, I had some great times, but were they the best times of my life? Absolutely not, because I don't believe it's right to hype up a time in your life so much because it will never ever live up to your expectations. Since then, maybe it's true and I haven't had as much fun but that doesn't mean I haven't had some great times. I've had great times at work with my colleagues, I've had some great times with my family, and I've had amazing times with my boyfriend (like the time we spent all day playing Doki Doki Literature Club). My point here is that it's easy to look back at a time in your life and feel like we could have done more to take advantage of it. That if we didn't have fun, it was because of us, when that is entirely not the case. We must get rid of this notion that you can only have fun when you're young, or when you're in academia. I have only recently started to feel like I'm comfortable in my own skin, and that, unfortunately only happens as you get a bit older. There's also no definition of what 'fun' is. It means something different for everyone. What I consider fun, will indisputably not be fun for someone else.

If there's anything you can say that you learned from this is that we are not our past. We are not privy to making the mistakes that we once did. We learn from the past, and we grow, but we cannot stay. The past has nothing for us, and no amount of regret or happiness should be enough to make you feel like you don't deserve to enjoy the here and now. The past has no power over you, it is not a person or some kind of supernatural entity, it just is. It shouldn't matter to you because it isn't you. You are not it. Let's stop playing into this commercialised notion that the past is somehow better and brighter and that the future is full of hopelessness. We must understand that companies will play into our softness for the past and for nostalgia. Nostalgia is not your friend. It can be a nice acquaintance that you get a coffee with sometimes, but it should never be something that you actively go looking for because it does not care about you.