Experience

[wisdomgiver]

I'll just launch right into this one. Some people feel that you should forget the past, that when something goes wrong in your life, when you make a "bad" decision or do something embarrassing, you should simply put it behind you and move on. Well, much as some of us may not like to admit it, the past does define who we are. We may go through

Comments

[anonymous]

This is an awesome entry. I think you should write a column for a paper or something. I'm definitely putting a link to this on my away message...this is awesome...people should listen when you speak more often ;-) as long as you're not leading them because you are forever he who gets us lost :-D

~Ang~ (as if you didn't know it was me)

[anonymous]

that's so true. most people don't understand the importance of evaluating the past. past relationships, experiences, situations. turning them over in your mind can help you define what you're doing in the future.

however, the important thing to remember is to make sure you don't fall into the dark wallowing hole of self-pity that appears while looking backwards.

[wisdomgiver]

Well, exactly. You should never become obsessed with the past, or as the saying goes you'll doom yourself to repeating it. You look at the past to learn from it- not just in the sense of preventing repeated mistakes. One reason I keep a personal diary is because when you read through entries of as little as a year past, you see just how much you've changed. Not only that, but you begin to see common themes that play through your life and the things that are truly important to you. In that sense, knowing our own past can give us real wisdom in knowing ourselves in the present.