Living in Echoes

I read something recently, some piece of advice. I can't for the life of me recall where I saw it and I will have to paraphrase, for I really just have a feel for the meaning as opposed to the words, but it went something like this:


"When we have a memory, particularly a painful one, we tend to live it as it actually just happened, or is happening. We play it out in such a way that we harness the emotions and run around with them which causes the pain to feel as it did when the original event happened. It would serve us better when the memory surfaces (as they always do, there's no way around that) to let it sit and try to feel for it as a jumping off point to something better.  Instead of it being a portal to pain, remember the benefits that came from it, be they immediate or some time after."


Ok, so I totally embellished what was probably just a one sentence affirmation, but you get it, right? I mean, who hasn't ridden that crazy horse time after time?


"Letting it go" isn't an easy thing to do. You can fling it away but it'll come back like the ball attached to the bat. You can hide from it, but it will still be there drumming its fingers on the dining room table waiting for you to continue feasting, dejected, on the scraps of the past.


But, what a concept to be able to see the event, the memory, to view it as if it were a screenshot from a movie. The moment your heart broke when he/she called it quits.  The last evening of your beloved restaurant. The day the realtor stuck a For Sale sign in the front yard of the house you could no longer afford to keep. Anything like that, any hurt moment...grab it and face it, look at it, don't run, don't hide.

Then know where you are right now, who you are, and how far you have journeyed from that moment.

Getting caught in echoes from the past is the easiest, least resistant thing we can do.  If you want to prolong hurt and anger in order to keep searching for answers, or to fool yourself into thinking that there must still be work done before the pain goes away, that is your choice.


Wouldn't it be a more compassionate thing for yourself to see the positive of the now; the benefits of lessons learned, even the most difficult?


Take a deep breath, because those echoes will just keep you in ever decreasing circles, and that's no life for you to be living.