The Positive Past

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” -Søren Kierkegaard

The past can suck. Well, okay actually parts of the past can suck, but there are a ton of positive things as well. Here's an example:

If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's my social network: the people I have surrounded myself with for the past 7 or so years. From middle school on up I have been allowed to influence, and have been influenced by the most incredible circle of people, and over the last few weeks I bit a rather specific sort of bullet and chose to reconnect as much as I could with individuals I had lost some closeness with. I talked to pals from high school, my various friend groups, old teachers, and some others. I count myself very lucky to have all of them, not because of any action on my part, but because of everything on their part.

The past... it can be difficult, but it influences your present whether you like it or not. It is completely in your control however, how and where that influence comes into play--for positive or for negative. For me, my experiences with all these people have helped to lay the foundation for my current self, and so when I made all these re-connections, I was simply hoping that these people remembered me with the same fondness that I remembered them.

What I walked away with was the realization that even though we hadn't spoken in a while, or there had been past misunderstandings and miss-communications, there was still so much positive history that when push came to shove, a reciprocated friendship and understanding still remained. By nature, humans are pro-social, working for the benefit of each other most of the time, and it leaves a mark. So all those times when maybe you took someone aside in an empty hallway so they could tell you how they were feeling, all those times you crowded into a van and solved the world's problems, all those times you let yourself be vulnerable in a piece of writing, or even those times when you got into a car together and didn't know where you'd end up or when you'd be back... all those shared experiences aren't meaningless. When I reached out to those connections with something like, "Is it ok if I talk with you for a little bit? because I'm hurting and I feel helpless and I need some reassurance to help me get through this." The response I got was nothing short of an incredible resurgence of all of that past positive regard and those positive experiences.

My friends, my family, my mentors, and my random acquaintances showed me love and support impossible to measure. They came through for me, just like I needed them to. I have faith in them no doubt, but maybe more importantly, they have faith in me. They told me again and again that I knew what was best for me, and that I knew what was right. It's not necessarily so much what our connections do for us, but what they teach us to do for ourselves that stands the ultimate test of time. How lucky I am then, to have both beautiful experiences. Through all those many many many conversations, re-connections  and essentially trust falls, I now know with everything in me, that I'm doing the right thing. I am in a beautiful situation, and I'm in a wonderful place in my life.

As my high school poetry teacher recently told me,
"Trust yourself. Trust love."

-Megan