Past, Present, Future. Where to live, where to look?

Do they all point to the same place?

But Lot’s wife looked back from behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt. – Genesis 19:26

If you’re unfamiliar with this Old Testament story, God spares Lot and his family from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah but instructs them to not look back as they are fleeing.  Lot’s wife, curious and/or disobedient, ignores the warning and is calcified.  I wonder if a similar thing can happen to us, metaphorically speaking, if we revisit our pasts at a moment when we need to focus on forward movement.   Does looking over our shoulder paralyze us?   There have been many relocations and transition points in my life where, in order to begin anew, I visualized what was next to help propel me.  And, although I once clung to every artifact of my life (even ticket stubs) as if they were sacred relics, I learned to whittle my possessions, purging the dingy, the defunct and the damaged so I could start with a clean slate.  Still, over time, certain memories and emotions would show up and knock at my door.

“Did you really mean to leave us behind?” they ask as they huddle in a sniveling heap on the stoop.  If I follow Rumi’s advice, I need to let them in.

Since I’m a porous person, susceptible to believing anything that sounds remotely wise, I decided to see what quotable people had to say about the past (whether and when to look back).  What follows is a sampling:

First, the folks who recognize the role of the past: 

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past. – Baruch Spinoza

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.  – Golda Meir

You cannot survive if you do not know the past. – Oriana Fallaci

No individual can be constructed entire without a link with the past. – Achad Ha’am

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  – George Santayana

Some people advise moderation in visiting the past:

The first recipe for happiness is: Avoid too lengthy meditation on the past. – Andre Maurois

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.  – Jan Glidewell

One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us.  -Michael Cibenko

There is a way to look at the past. Don’t hide from it. It will not catch you if you don’t repeat it. – Pearl Bailey

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. – Cherokee Proverb

Others suggest ignoring it: 

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.  – Buddha

Most people think of forgetfulness as a defect.  I consider it a great benefit.  Being able to forget frees you from the burdens of the past.  – Rebbe Nachman of Breslov

Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward—your destiny—are here and now.  –Dag Hammarskjold

Some don’t conceive of the past as an immutable entity that existed previously:  

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make. – William Morris

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.  -Richard Bach

The past, the present and the future are really one: they are today.  – Harriet Beecher Stowe

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.  – Jessamyn West

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.  – Albert Einstein

The only way to travel to the past — however you define it — is through memory: 

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter. – Charles De Lint, The Onion Girl

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us. -Oscar Wilde

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. – Saul Bellow

That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it. – Elie Wiesel

And then there’s the kicker by Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything is Illuminated):

“Jews have six senses.  Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing … memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?”

I was either genetically disposed towards, or trained to cultivate, this kind of memory, and also indoctrinated to “Never Forget”.  Paired with a highly sensitive nervous system that stores the energetic residue of prior events, I often feel like I inhabit an odd contraption that doesn’t easily release me into the present moment.  Sometimes writing about challenging incidents in my life can loosen the grip, other times it seems to tighten the apparatus.  I hoped that by typing this I would arrive at some conclusion, but all I can say is….oy.

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