Sometimes I walk through my past.
I wouldn’t call it regret. It’s more like a new way of understanding.
I think it’s nearly impossible for anyone who hasn’t lived my life to understand how significant the things that happened in it are. On a certain level, I have lived most of my life alone. And really, who is interested in another person’s life story? Why would you want to spend countless hours listening to someone give the ends and outs of their past life?
But if you want to indulge…sometimes I go back in my mind, now, to when I was a kid who was still Christian. Things I would have said or done differently.
It’s a recalibration. I know we learn from our past, and I don’t want old lessons there that shouldn’t be there.
If I knew then what I know now about religion, what would I have thought all those years, sitting in the pew? With what I know now about gender and masculinity, what would I have thought and said when my father told me to “be a man”? With what I know now about the importance of standing up for yourself, what would I have said all those times I was told I was selfish just for expressing my opinion?
I don’t really think about how my life would be different. Just the situations I would have acted differently in. And as I’ve done this, I’ve slowly uprooted beliefs that have taken root in my psyche — things that I act as if they are true, even though I know, intellectually, they are not. And yes, I was in church all my life until 28, so there’s a lot of baggage to unload.
I have these moments, late at night, when I walk down the old, dark hallways of my past, shine the light of the viewpoint I’ve gained onto the chapters of my life to reread and reinterpret them. It’s not to be trapped in regret; it’s to create a past that helps me as life moves forward.
I’ve heard that your Christian past is a waste of time. I think that’s up to you.
It may be if you move on from it, letting the habits it planted in you last, and forgetting how much those past experiences may influence your present moment. Then the memories just lie there, dormant, useless — except for the way they subconsciously influence the way you do things in the present.
But then again — these are still experiences you had of being in the world. Even experiences you saw the wrong way constitute raw data on how the world works. Rethinking and reinterpreting those experiences and situations can add value to your past and help inform your future.
This is, by the way, how many psychologists frequently help people deal with traumatic memories. Rather than encourage people who have experienced trauma to simply move past it, psychologists tend to encourage them to go back to the traumatic events, reliving and rethinking them using the emotional maturity they have gained, as Dr. Bill Klemm is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University, explains:
Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health problems and are often treated with so-called extinction therapies. That is, therapy is geared toward unlearning (extinguishing) our fears by deliberately re-living the disturbing event under safe conditions and thereby learning we can cope.
Modern psychotherapy for phobias, anxiety, and PTSD often involves recalling the original bad event under reassuring conditions. But this has to be done with conscious re-assessment and realization that the original negative emotions and fear are no longer applicable because the re-living is a simulation in a safe environment. One creates a new learning substitute for the original emotional trauma.
The re-living must include dealing with the negative emotions in the light of reason and new emotional experience. Therapy requires critical thinking about thoughts and feelings, especially those that are unhelpful and unrealistic. The patient is gently led to face memories anew and to learn new ways of thinking and behaving. This re-creation of the bad event allows us to extinguish memory of the original bad situation and its negative emotion.
And you don’t just do this to extinguish bad memories. The reinterpretation can help you create new ones:
At first, scientists thought that extinction erases the memory of the CR. But extinction really creates a new memory that competes with memory of the original CR. Both memories co-exist.
The article goes on to say that, in order for the new memory to have its effect, it has to be rehearsed. It’s something to be revisited, or it will go away.
I like the new memories I’m making, and how they’re helping me navigate through life, making better decisions based on new things I’m learning through re-interpretations of my past.
In many ways, it’s been a beautiful thing — in some places, necessary. So I’m passing it on to you.
Think about your past. But don’t just regret it. Think about what you would have done differently, and why, based on what you know. And let that knowledge, the new past you create, drive your future.
Thanks for reading.