On moving things forward
Some gentle instructions for when you’re stuck in the past
My preference is always to face in the direction of travel, to see where I’m going. But unlike a train journey, we can’t always make out what is ahead.
In many languages, including English, we refer to the future as something in front of us. Yet others, such as Aymara, it is the word for past that means “eye” “sight” or “front” and tomorrow translates to "some day behind one's back.” It makes sense that we face the past—we’ve been there, it’s in view, even if it’s an incomplete and subjective picture.
It is the future we cannot see. We head towards it, in the opposite direction of travel. But keeping a view of the past with us can be the very thing that helps us move forward, or as the Māori proverb puts it, ‘Ka mua, ka muri: walking backwards into the future.’1
It’s important to contemplate the past because it can improve our understanding. To paraphrase Kilroy J Oldster, it’s never a time-wasting exercise to examine the past as its reverberations provide learning rubrics for living today.”
Yet as someone with a tendency to wallow, there is a risk that such examination can lead to becoming stuck in the past. There have been times such rumination, reliving, rehashing has provided an odd comfort. Easier to live in the past with its shades of certainty, even if painful. As Rebecca Solnit said, “It surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.”
Living in the present requires living in uncertainty. It requires moving things forward despite not knowing. This is why the emphasis on motion is so important—we may be “walking backwards” with a clear view of the past, but we are heading in the direction of our lives.
It’s sometimes easier said than done to move on, to keep going, to face uncertainty. So here are some gentle instructions from someone who is familiar with living in various parts of the past, and is learning to move things forward.