The past

One of the basic teachings of Buddhism (and other philosophies as well, I suppose) is that there is no past. The past is just something that exists in your mind — your perceptions and opinions of things that happened previously. We each remember the past with varying degrees of accuracy. Sometimes what we remember isn't what happened. We can't even agree about the lyrics to old TV theme songs, let alone things of significance.

My memories of my own past tend toward the negative. It seems as if every mistake, every embarrassment and every failure is as clear now as if it happened last week — even things that happened in sixth and seventh grade. There were things I did well, but the memory of them isn't as clear as the things that went badly. If I think about my past, my thoughts will most likely focus on something I did that I wish I hadn't done, or that I had done differently.

I don't know if I've forgotten or suppressed all the good things that happened or all the positive things I did, or if there just weren't very many of them. I know I sense a certain discomfort remembering things I did well, as if that were some form of egotism or puffery.

It may also be that I've inflated the significance of the negative memories. Maybe those things weren't as big as they seemed at the time. It's hard now to go back and clear those things up because I've lost track of almost everyone I knew prior to about 2002, and all of my immediate family has passed on.

I moved a lot as a child and adolescent, so I was able to leave a lot of stuff behind. No one where I live now knows anything about my junior high and high school days because they happened in another city.

One of the advantages of retirement is that I don't have much of a practical reason to think about those things now. A retired person doesn't need a 'reputation,' and there's not much reason to worry about what I did five or thirty-five years ago or what anyone else knows or thinks about those things today.

There are always things from the past we have to carry with us to the present — how to get to the grocery store, where we put the car keys, our friends' telephone numbers and so on. We must sometimes remember mistakes to avoid repeating them. The problem I have is knowing how much significance I should ascribe to things from the past.