America the poor: A Wanderers Tale, Volume One

Chapter 2: Excerpt.. The Pull of the Past, a Dialogue

Let me ask something, to myself and to my brave readers. Why does our past hold so much appeal to us? It sways our thinking, our actions and innermost thoughts.

This effect actually seems doubled in those of us who have lived unfulfilled or unhappy lives. I've noticed a tendency for those souls who have been through traumatic experiences, or even lives with far less happiness or even dissatisfaction to dwell and even bathe in thoughts of the past. I've also noticed this far more in the folks who are considered deep thinkers, and often, they do not live happy lives, many have suffered. However, people who have fulfilling normal lives don't dwell nearly as much as we do for some reason. The few that do certainly don't talk about it. Ignorance is truly bliss. These are people who are social, who smile, who laugh, and go out in public almost daily to societal functions, and seem truly more joyful, at least on the surface. They post on instagram, take selfies, make money, own homes, have families, kids, maybe a white picket fence.

Their lives seem fuller somehow, and all the evidence seems to show they actually avoid deep thought, maybe because they dont require it. There's no need for them to look past the surface of things, because the surface of their lives works for them.

These are shallow waters, with no lurking sharks, and they can view all the way to the bottom seemingly. They never need to venture into the deeper waters of existence. They are perfectly happy to doggie paddle in the shallows, where their feet touch the sand, never wanting to go further.

They live their lives, have families, and die content,or at least seeming that way, believing they have fulfilled their only purpose, the reason they are here,cradle to grave.

So since they are already pleased with their lot in life, they have no real desires to give their own existence that much thought I suppose. Necessity is the mother of invention right?

They never need to look back, because their lives are complete, and happy,at least enough for them to appear normal.However, some of us are tortured souls. We are loners, outcasts, pariahs, misfits,delinquents, deplorables, and various forms of weirdos, and for us, retrospection is not just a desire, but the very stuff of our existence.

Without our inspection of our past, we cannot understand who we are, or in some cases, what we are! As a fish needs water, and a mosquito needs blood, we need our depths for our very survival. They sustain our thoughts,without it, we surely perish mentally and spiritually. For souls like us, the past has an undeniable draw, a pull, a captivation. We cannot help but look back, not to pine for it, but to understand it, and maybe possibly learn something about ourselves.

In the game of chess, you don't just move, you think, you scheme, not just for the moment, but for the future. You have to create a plan,learn from watching your opponent play, and think many moves ahead, at least if you are a worthy player. Why can't we apply the same philosophy to the past? We can look back to many of our moves, analyze,and absorb all the lessons from past events and actions, and use that knowledge to understand ourselves rather than just acting in the moment. The past is certainly behind us, but in a way, we are our past, a perfect product of things that have happened to us, and the reactions we've had to those events.. Sometimes events occurred to us, but we also made events occur as well.

Perhaps we are BOTH cause and effect, the action, and the reaction. The Universe created us, and is created in turn by us. We have helped shape our reality, as it has shaped us. Perhaps that's where this fascination actually stems from? To understand ourselves, we need to understand our origins.

For what is the tree without its original seed? The ocean without the drops of water? They are nothing without them, they wouldn't even exist, and we are the same.

To understand ourselves, we have to see the path behind us, and where we came from, and what motivated us to take this particular path, to end up here, now. By doing this, we can understand our reality a bit better. After all, we are the same. The world made us, and issues from us as well. We are all true creators in our hearts, with a need and desire, a longing to shape things as we see fit, including ourselves.

Perhaps it's not conscious, but unconscious, and we don't know how to put it into words, but the need is there, at least for some of us. Growing and learning are both parts of creation, and ultimately that's what we all want to do, create. However to ever even have a hope, we must understand ourselves, in every way possible, so we look behind us. We don't really have a choice. 

In order to move on, to make progress as thinking unique beings, we must understand ourselves, our past, and the past even before we existed, because it led to us.What we are, who we are, and what we come from, all the same thing. One story, not many. "Know thyself" as Socrates said, there lies our path to happiness, and for many of us, our only path.