There are definitely times where I can be caught reminiscing over something or another, and there are certainly a handful of things and places to which I have attached moderate to severe sentimentality, but overall, I tend not to be a terribly reflective individual. While my mother points out occasionally that I always have demonstrated a tendency to recall very obscure happenings and details years later, it is also incredibly common for me to forget rather significant conversations and events that one would typically expect to leave a marked impression. More than once I've had someone make the comment in the course of conversation that they "will never forget" when I did or said such and such. These comments often leave me feeling fairly awkward since whatever it was I said or did clearly left an impression them, and typically I have zero recollection of whatever it is they are referring to.
I just don't spend a whole lot of time looking back at what has happened and what I have done in the past. When I do happen to glance at the rear view mirror, I tend to feel more than a little overwhelmed and it boggles my mind to look at how much can happen in a very short span of time. However, as fun as it can be to compare how much everyone's grown and how far everyone's gone in the last couple years, I have a hard time walking away from my irregular bouts of sentimentality feeling like looking back on the good ol' days does a whole lot of good. Sure, I am all for learning from past mistakes and using days gone by as a stepping stone for bigger and greater things, but frequently dwelling on what has already been (and more specifically what could have been) strikes me as a fairly unhealthy mental occupation overall.
See, while I have yet to participate in anything unspeakably horrible (not that I'd speak of them if I had), it is hard for me to look back at even decisions I was making last week without wanting to kick myself for making stupid decisions and calling all the wrong shots. The farther back you go, the easier it is to start getting hyper-critical of my ways of thinking and acting. I have done a lot of stupid things, and I've said a lot of even stupider things. Very likely I am still doing and saying a lot of embarrassing, awkward, and offensive things. (Sorry mom!)
It seems part of human nature to Scrooge things up on a regular basis, and while I am certainly no exception to this rule, I imagine it would be extremely difficult for anyone to dwell extensively on the past without reliving more mistakes than success. That's not to say that there aren't people who have done a great deal of remarkable things with their lives, or that most people looking back are going to regret life choices like getting married, buying their house, or having kids. What I am trying to say is that, no mater how many good choices we've made, there seems to be a very good chance that in most scenarios we could have done better and, looking back, we know it.
The risk to start asking "What if I had only...?" or "How would things be different if I had...?" and I feel like those are very dangerous and (mostly) unhelpful questions to be asking in the great scheme of things. Certainly, we want to learn from both our accomplishments and our failings, but the temptation to get caught up in where we might have been had we gone with some other life choice rather than where we really are is, at least for me, very strong.
Not only does living in an alternative version of your life damage your ability to live the life you have actually been given to the fullest, it becomes easier and easier to go from thinking "If only I had done such and such!" to "If only so and so had done such and such!" and "If only I'd been raised under such and such conditions!"
When you're acting out a life scenario different from the one you would like to have, it becomes oh so easy to start blaming the rest of the world for it. Well sure I could have made a better choices back then, but I didn't because Mr. Yahoo ruined my life by telling me X, and Ms. Whatsit always got whatever she wanted at my expense. Oh, and don't get me started on how much I lacked growing up because my current status in life is totally the fault of my upbringing, the government, religion, and the fact that they started hooking up the alphabet with math once I reached high school.
As usual, I am probably wrong in making a blanket statement, but I'm inclined to say that asking what could have been is never going to be beneficial in the long run, because you don't get to live in what could have been. We get to live in what is, and if we waste our time reminiscing about what has, hasn't, and never will, we aren't really taking advantage of what is actually available to us.
(That's probably all just my attempt to justify forgetting everything.)
Mostly though, I think tend not to dwell on the past because I am too busy focusing on what's going on now and what's coming down the line in the immediate future.
When something unfortunate happens, I tend to panic, or get depressed, or otherwise get upset in some fashion, but fairly quickly (I think), I start asking myself "Now what?" My mental state tends not to be too stationary, and usually my reaction to a new, unfortuante development is something along the lines of "Ah, well, shoot... That sucks... But what does this mean? What happens now? Where do we go from here? Can we fix it? What has to happen?"
Now, I'm not trying to brag about my superior ability to respond a crisis, because, well, because sometimes (usually) my performance is pretty sub-par, but I like to think that at least my mind starts to go in the right direction.
Dealing with life isn't about determining what could have been. It is about discovering what's next.
Over the last year, I was bequeathed the title Mr. Plan by a friend of mine because of my tendency to respond to everything with either "What's the plan?" or "Sounds like a plan." At one point in time, I consider myself a pretty spontaneous individual, but that point in time has since vanished into the distant horizon. I can still appreciate the concessional last minute spur of the moment decision to do something entirely unplanned, but for the most part, I am rather predisposed to knowing what on earth is supposed to be going on.
Last week on my way to visit some friends my car broke down within minutes of my getting out of town. The engine overheated and my gas peddle ceased to function (just for kicks). As I rolled down the road (which was thankfully empty) into some random soul's driveway, I was totally freaking out. It was pretty obvious that I would not be making the two hour drive out of town in my vehicle. Thankfully, this was the first time I've had to deal with my car dying on me while driving (the bottom of my vehicle started falling off on the highway one time, but that's another story), but my mind was racing 100 mph, and consequently a lot faster than my vehicle, as I tried to figure out what to do.
Thankfully, after I called my dad and he drove out to where I was pulled over, we determined that after the car had cooled down, it could be restarted and could operate normally...ish... long enough for us to get it to the mechanic about fifteen minutes away. Unfortunately, once the mechanic had a chance to look the car over, he determined that the issue was directly tied to a malfunctioning/broken/whatever head gasket in the engine and would require a rather pricey fix.
I spent the last several days trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my car. If it was worth the cost of the repair, if I really absolutely needed a car right now, and if I could maybe afford a replacement, but when I finally made the decision yesterday to just pay for the repair, I stopped worrying about the problem completely. Yeah, the cost is still going to suck, but now at least I know what is going on. I have a plan, and while everything obviously doesn't always go according to plan, having one in place makes it a lot easier for me to be at peace with my decisions and be comfortable with moving forward.
Just as spending too much time looking back makes me feel depressed and discouraged, trying to look too far forward without any kind of battle strategy in place is overwhelming and petrifying. Life's too complicated and demanding to try and just float through hoping for the best, and it is too precious to waste it wishing things were different from the way they really are. I would much rather spend my time figuring out how to make the most of what I have actually been given, and for me at least, that means looking at what I have now, where I want to be, and how I am going to get there.
Undoubtedly, many of my plans and especially those covering what I'm going to do a year or more from now when I'm graduated, are going to end up playing out very differently form how I imagine them now, but in my mind, at least I know I'm going somewhere and I have something to work towards. Whether or not the place I'm driving myself to is exactly what I imagine it to be is not really my concern. Instead, I'm just trying make sure that I'm moving toward something, and that the journey getting there is worthwhile.
Maybe everything I've just said applies only to me, and maybe it is all rubbish, but I really feel like there is something to be said for focusing more on where you're going than where you could have been. I want to be able to appreciate what I've managed to accomplish with my life, but more than that, I want to be able to enjoy accomplishing more.
Life isn't stationary, and it certainly isn't moving backwards. I don't know what's going to happen, I don't know what could have happened had I made some different life choices, but whatever comes, at least I've got a plan.
Pax
"Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered what you can't do once you've done it."
~ King Shrewd in Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice
