Me yesterday, today, tomorrow
Dwelling on the past and saying, “things were better back then” can only bring sadness—especially when we truly consider what such an admission means for the future. Things are constantly changing around us, and if we remain stuck in the past, life will move on without us. Whether we realize it or not.
Our past should serve as a stepping stone for the next step we take, not as a “comfortable” room where we lock ourselves in and curl up for the rest of our lives. Because if we retreat to what is familiar out of fear of the new, all we will achieve is stagnation. And, whether we like it or not, life requires movement! When I speak of movement, I don’t mean replacing the relationships and bonds we have formed, but evolving them. And to be clear, to get to the heart of the matter: if our relationship with our parents does not evolve, every relationship from our past will leave us settling into the familiar room of our childhood.
Our people
Our “people”—the relationships that matter to us—should not become obstacles to our happiness. They should not be a mere repetition of a story whose script did not satisfy us but rather its evolution. If we feel that our parents never gave us certain things or only provided them sparingly, then resentment, sadness, and anger will accompany us into adulthood. With a strange mathematical precision, these ingredients will find their way into every relationship in our present and future.
We are a blend of choices, emotions, wounds, and touches. And as the years go by, our blend grows additively—the question is, what gets added each time? Life is certainly not made of a pink cloud; difficult and painful things happen all the time. The problem arises when we focus only on them. Because reality also consists of pleasant and relieving moments… but do we have the ability to see them? To feel them? To balance the negative emotions with them?
Most people know the feeling expressed by the phrase: “So many people around me, beside me, yet I feel so alone.” Loneliness stems from the thought: “No one understands me… No one truly knows how I feel.”
How Do I Feel?
And this is where a conversation begins—one that could last forever—unless we honestly answer two questions:
How will the other person know how you feel if you don’t tell them your real emotions?
When was the first time you tried to communicate (in any way you knew) with an adult, and they failed to understand your need and meet it as they should have? You may say, “Does everything have to do with my past? I grew up, I became an adult, I took my life into my own hands. What’s the point of digging into my childhood or blaming my parents for what they didn’t do right?”
My answer is this: Everything has to do with the present, not the past. But in order to recognize and fully experience our present, we must step out of the “comfortable” room of our childhood. And there is only one key to unlock that door: recognizing and understanding the unique blend that each of us is made of.
Psychotherapy is not for the troubled or the crazy—it is for the brave. Because it takes courage to embark on a journey of self-understanding. A journey that will lead to the realization that both what brought us joy (all the things our parents did right) and what caused us pain (all their omissions and mistakes) have equally contributed to the person standing in the present. And this realization is called emotional maturity.