Kumar Bahukhandi
The past deserves a place in our memory, but it need not decide how we live today.
We constantly live under shadows. Shadows of who we are and who we aspire to be; shadows of our dreams and the expectations of people who love us; shadows of our words and actions, of an uncertain future and of a past we cannot change.
Sometimes, we become so accustomed to these shadows that we fail to notice the light around us.
Since childhood, I remember being told to live in the present, to let go of what is lost and gone, and not to worry excessively about the future. But do we really do that?
I often find myself surrounded by people and voices dwelling in yesterday. Sometimes, I discover that my own voice has joined them. We revisit old disappointments, rehearse conversations that ended long ago and imagine how life might have unfolded had one decision been different.
Remembering is natural. But there is a difference between visiting the past and making it our permanent address.
Walking Ahead While Looking Back
I wonder how we expect to walk ahead when our heads remain turned backwards, searching for people, places and moments we have already passed.
The road we travelled has new travellers now. We may return to the place, but we cannot return to the same moment. Even if everything appears unchanged, we are different.
Every morning, the newspaper reminds me how uncertain life is. Accidents, natural calamities, violence and broken relationships interrupt lives that, only a day earlier, must have seemed full of plans.
These reports make me uncomfortable. They also make me ask: how much time do we have to do what we keep postponing?
There are people we mean to meet, words we intend to say, work we hope to begin and apologies we have delayed. Yet we give so much of today to something that happened years ago.
When Memory Becomes a Shadow
Even a glorious past can cast a long shadow.
We may become so attached to an earlier success that every new opportunity seems inadequate beside it. We may remember a relationship with such longing that we stop noticing the affection still present in our lives.
Painful memories carry a different weight. A failed marriage, a broken home, the loss of a child or a deeply felt betrayal cannot simply be dismissed with an instruction to “move on”.
Some losses remain part of us. Remembering someone we loved does not mean we have failed to embrace life. Nor does grief follow a timetable convenient to those around us.
But perhaps we can ask ourselves, gently: are we carrying the memory, or has the memory begun to carry us away from everything else?
What We Choose to Do with Our Time
Michael Josephson’s reflection What Will Matter offers a useful reminder to examine our lives through the way we treat others.
It makes me think of the ordinary choices we often overlook. Did I listen when someone needed to speak? Did I keep a promise? Did I use my position fairly? Was I unnecessarily harsh with someone who could not answer back?
These questions belong to the present. We can do something about them today.
We cannot rewrite an old conversation, but we can speak more thoughtfully in the next one. We cannot recover every lost opportunity, but we can stop neglecting the opportunity before us.
That seems a more useful occupation than endlessly arguing with yesterday.
Allowing Life a Second Chance
Sometimes, a fresh possibility arrives quietly. It may be a new responsibility, a friendship, a relationship or the chance to begin work we once abandoned.
Instead of considering it on its own terms, we question it through our earlier disappointment.
“This failed before.”
“I trusted someone once.”
“What if the same thing happens again?”
Experience should make us thoughtful. Yet if every new beginning must answer for an old hurt, we may never allow anything to begin.
A second chance need not resemble the first. It may ask something different of us. It may also reveal that we have learned more than we realise.
Returning to the Present
Living in the present is easy advice to give and difficult advice to practise.
The mind wanders. A familiar song, a photograph or an unexpected name can take us back many years. There is no need to condemn ourselves for that.
We can return, patiently, to the life around us: the person sitting beside us, the task waiting on our desk, the walk we have been postponing or the friend whose call we have not returned.
Some days, that return will be easier than on others. When memories become overwhelming, accepting support is also an act of courage.
Faith and hope do not require us to pretend that nothing painful happened. They allow us to believe that something worthwhile may still happen.
The past has helped shape us. We can acknowledge its tenderness, its mistakes and its wounds without surrendering every remaining day to it.
Let us remember what has gone, care for what remains and make room for what may yet come.
Acknowledgement: This essay draws inspiration from Michael Josephson’s reflection, “What Will Matter”.
