The Past Was Not What You Remember

So rewrite it to serve you now.

The jar that held cotton balls in our bathroom was empty, so I reached into the cupboard to get the cotton ball bag to refill the jar.

As I unzipped the first plastic bag to reach the second, I asked myself, “Why? Why do I have cotton balls in two plastic bags?”

And the answer was that years ago, we lived in a house harboring a chipmunk. Mr. Chips was quite friendly and often stopped and watched Del as he worked at his desk.

Mr. Chips habitually stored sunflower seeds (left out for the birds) in shoes and laundry baskets for future use. He also had a habit of grabbing my cotton balls to make nests, hence the two bagged cotton balls.

It made sense at the time, but that was years ago. There have been no resident chipmunks since then!

Stop doing something that made sense before but doesn’t now.

In a coaching session, a client mentioned in passing that she hated dancing. That prompted me to assign her to go back and discover why she hated it. What was the original cause of that feeling? After a few weeks of stalling, she finally took the time to relive the event and discovered an astonishing fact.

Here’s the result, in her words:

“My session of reliving my early dance experiences was very enlightening. Having spent all these years thinking I have never enjoyed dancing, I have obviously been mistaken. The feelings I had remembering the dance recital that vividly stuck out in my mind as a huge embarrassment were incorrect!

“I remember loving dancing with my teddy bear and wearing a little outfit my mother had tirelessly sewn with little knickerbockers and a cute little top. In fact, I couldn’t wait for the recital to be over so I could wear them to bed, and I did until I grew out of them.”

Memories are always false.

Once in a while, a photo of me taken during a class at UCLA in the 1970s resurfaces. Every time I saw it, I would focus on the fact that I was going down into a plie when everyone else was rising.

I would berate myself for not knowing the right thing to do or being stubborn about doing the wrong thing because I thought I was right.

It came to me one day that maybe I was the one doing it right.

My point is that I had built up a story around being wrong or stubborn, which carried over into other parts of my life.

Many of the decisions we make in life are based on things that happened in the past, either not in the way we remember them or are not relevant now.

It’s as if we drive up to moments in our lives with a dump truck filled with terrible memories. Then we dump portions of that garbage into our brand-new moment.

The past was never what it seems to us now. It is only a present construct of an incomplete and inaccurate memory.

Albert Einstein said, “Space and time are not conditions in which we live, they are simply modes in which we think.”

This means that when we choose to shift our perceptions and think differently, the conditions in which we live will change.

Sometimes, we design our present lives in ways that will keep us from returning to the past, perhaps because the past was one of poverty of love, money, or health.

But being afraid of the past is the same as living in the past.

When asked why he wasn’t angry with the Chinese for taking over his country, the Dalai Lama said, “Why should I give them my mind as well?”

Learning from the past differs from living in it or fleeing it.

Shining a light on the past that hides in the closet of our lives, is living under the bed, or is hiding in the basement will reveal the underlying framework of the life we live.

Wouldn’t it be easier to throw the water of truth onto those memories of the past and let them dissolve into something that will serve us now?

It’s much easier to unzip only one bag to get to the cotton balls. When my client realized her memory was false, it opened up a world of possibilities.

Misinterpretation of events leads to false conclusions.

When I answered the phone, my client asked me if I had a cold. “No,” I said. “Must be the connection since I can barely hear you.”

When he realized he had placed the mouthpiece of his headset up above his head, which is why I sounded to him as if I had a cold and why I couldn’t hear him, we spent the next few minutes unable to stop laughing.

Letting go of the past and letting in the present's abundance can be just as easy and joyful. We need to move the focus of our thoughts, the mouthpiece of our headsets, into our lives and be present with what exists now for us.

Let’s live with a fresh look and a new awareness as our days unfold.

Let’s be willing not to let an imperfect memory of the past spoil the perfect moment of the present.

Choose to rewrite the memory of the past to serve you now.