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Clinging to The Past is Making You Miserable
The uncomfortable power of embracing the unknown.
We spend incredible amounts of energy trying to recreate the past.
One Saturday morning in a barbershop when I was seventeen, I saw something sad. One of the customers was going on about the varsity high school football game the night before. He talked about how we sacked the other team’s quarterback, and how we stopped them on the ten-yard line. The problem is, the guy running his mouth was forty-four years old, overweight, with a bad knee. He was not on the field playing football the night before–he wasn’t even allowed on the sidelines.
Every small town has those people. They try to relive the glory days of youth because high school was the best time in their life. You may think it’s sad, but we all do the same thing in our own ways. There’s something about the nostalgia and certainty of the last that always draws us back. Hollywood has figured this out, which is why they constantly do terrible remakes of childhood classics.
Everyone is trying to relive something in their past. The catch is, it’s making you miserable.
The problem with the future
We say we’re looking forward to the future. We say we can’t wait to start our life in a new city…
