P is for Past

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

Does the past shape us? Or maybe the better question is to what extent does the past shape us?
I used to love holding my grandmother’s hands. I always felt that by touching her hands I was touching the past, reaching directly back into history. My grandmother died when she was 101 and I loved all the history that she held in those hands…history that belonged to me, especially when her hand was in mine.

In my life I have two very opposing perspectives on the role the past plays in our present. My husband believes we are solely responsible for our present, more specifically he believes that we are solely responsible for our behavior in the present. Our past makes for good and sometimes not so good memories but memories don’t define us nor control our behavior unless we let them. He believes that as adults we know right from wrong, even if we weren’t taught some of those lessons in our youth and that blaming our youth for poor decisions is simply a cop out.  On the other hand is my best friend. She believes that our past is 100% responsible for our present and that unless we closely examine our past and heal old wounds we can never fully grow up and live in the present.

I am somewhere in the middle. I know that my past shapes who I am.  I carry all those experiences of my childhood, youth and all the years through yesterday into my today.  Those experiences influence my beliefs, my hopes, what weighs me down and yes, even at times influences my behavior. And I actually love knowing that.  Some of those experiences in my childhood were difficult. I was bullied when I was in the sixth grade and think that experience led me to be a bit of a bully myself at times. Nothing I am proud of.  Thinking about those times when I was bullied still makes my stomach knot but I can choose not to be a bully despite that pain (and I am succeeding).  But not being a bully did require a bit of thinking about my past to determine what may have been pushing my buttons in my present.  The difference between me and my best friend is that I don’t dwell in the past.  I don’t think every decision I make today is controlled by my past nor do I believe that every childhood hurt has to somehow be healed before I can move on. The difference between me and my husband is that I acknowledge how the past does influence my present, actions included, and that at times, that’s really a good thing.

Another aspect of the past that I love thinking about is my family’s past…my ancestry.  My mother grew up very close to her cousins so I grew up very close to my grand aunts and uncles as well as my second cousins.  I never knew my great grandparents but I heard some of their stories, stories of hardship and stories of love. When we were in Sicily, my mother and I went to my great grandparent’s church in the little town of Sambuca (not the town famous for the liquor).  I loved touching the pews where they may have sat, touching the past, my past.   I loved knowing that somehow I was connected to that church, to that town.  I think of my ancestry as this amazing group of people standing just behind me, people whose strength is my strength, whose story is my story.  One of my sister-in-laws is especially good at instilling a gratitude for the past in her children. They bake things their grandparents and great grandparents baked; they celebrate holidays with some traditions pasted down from long gone relatives.

When people ask where I come from I still say Brooklyn even though I have lived away from that city for more years than I actually lived in it.  But it IS where I am from even if it is part of my past.  I think each of us carry our past into our present, the good, the bad, and everything in between. It’s what we do with it that matters. And just maybe taking a look at our past will open new possibilities for our future.