Many of us get stuck in the past. By that I mean we end up living our life looking backward at things that happened in our lives and regretting them. Some call this “looking in the rear view mirror.” I call it living life looking backward.
Here’s the thing: No matter what bad thing happened in the past, no matter what we did or what someone else did or what events happened, they are over. We can hang onto the memory of the hurt, anxiety, pain, suffering, sorrow, or whatever other negative emotion we felt at the time, and we can continue to blame others or ourselves, but this does not help us in the moment. In fact, all it does is hurt us more. It holds us in the same old emotions and prevents us from moving forward, from living our lives looking toward the future. It keeps us stuck.
They say hindsight is 20-20, and that really is true. What we really are supposed to see when we look backward at our lives are the lessons we were supposed to learn and the paths we had to take to get to where we are now. For most of us, if we hadn’t learned those lessons and had those experiences we wouldn’t be who we are or where we are in this moment.
Maybe we don’t think those experiences have shaped us for the good, but they can if we learn and grow from them. That’s the point.
In Judaism, just as in most Abrahamic faiths, we study the Torah, or bible, over and over again. Why? To try to learn from our ancestor’s mistakes and experiences. In that way we won’t repeat them. Rabbis and ministers get up ever week and offer sermons about portions from the Old Testament trying to help us learn how to be better people, have fulfilling relationships, live our lives more fully, connect with God, and t be happier and more peaceful–all by looking at the lives and experiences of those who went before us.
It’s important to look backward, but not to beat ourselves up for what we have done. Rather we want to learn from our mistakes and study the paths and detours we have taken. Then we want toย live our lives looking forward toward the future allowing those lessons to guide us on our way. Looking in that direction our vision may not be 20-20 but we will, indeed, see more clearly for having looked backward to glean understanding.
