A Personal Perspective: The past can be a trap but without it we’re lost.

By Arthur Dobrin D.S.W.

A friend loved his work and was very good at it. Several years after he retired, I asked whether he missed it.

“No,” he answered. “I never look back.”

His answer surprised me, as I am always looking back. I am very glad my wife has taken many family pictures over the years. I had them digitized and now see the photos as screen savers. Lyn and I appear as courting teenagers, and countless family gatherings scroll by—a thousand images of the past appearing randomly on my computer.

Am I doing myself a disservice by reliving those moments or was it my friend who was mistaken by not looking back?

There are reasons why people search for their roots and we have Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day. And the consideration of reparations to the Black community makes sense only if we remember how history shapes the present.

William Faulkner’s once said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” History has cautionary lessons to teach but it is even more important than that: the past has shaped who we are today. On a social level this means we live with social structures that are often unjust because of past actions; on a personal level it means that many of our desires and fears are buried in our unconscious.

So which is it then: my friend not turning to the past but living only in the present or my reliving the past every day with photos and memories? I think it is both, remaining cautious of both and willing to live with the contradiction.

Backward looking runs the risk of being mired in the past. This is the alure and danger of nostalgia. It can be an impediment to learning from new experiences and refusing to make changes for the better. It can therefore be an obstacle to a fulfilled and meaningful life.

But not looking backward has its own dangers. Looking backward holds individuals responsible for their decisions. Trials, for example, are backwards looking. Looking backward also establishes roots, which is why many who are adopted want to know about their birth parents. And backward looking is important for cultures. Recently, in referring to the looting of artifacts thousands of years old. “Traffickers are not just robbing Afghanistan of its history,” said Ambassador Roya Rahmani. “Looting Afghanistan’s past is looting Afghanistan’s future.”

Linking the past with the future is the message of the Roman god Janus, after whom the month of January is named. He is depicted as having two faces, one looking backward to the year past and the other peering forward into the future.

Our relationship to our pasts is complex. We are shaped by what has happened before, but it is also true that we constantly reshape the past by understanding it differently as we grow wiser. The past need not keep us stuck, but without acknowledging the past our future selves become rootless. Janus is a hopeful figure because the present is embedded in the past as he looks to the future that will be different.

Living fully in the present means knowing the moment for what it is—the accumulation of past experiences and the anticipation of the future pregnant with all we’ve done, thought, remembered and hope for.

The past isn’t foreign to us. It is us. We need to make use of it by understanding it without blinders and integrating into our better and higher selves.

Originally published at Psychology Today