A Person's Past Should Not be Simply Dismissed as Static History
It has been some six ears since I was last at my parents' house in San Diego. And it has been more than ten since I properly lived in it as a high school student. Returning the place where I studied, slept, and waited for news of being able to finally leave for school somewhere else, I noticed, before everything else, just how little the place has changed over the last decade. The same books I read then, the same furniture that I sat on, and the same decorations that I stared at still grace the house, with all of them in exactly the same places that I would have found them a decade ago.
Contrasting that intransigence of things lying around the house, the people who inhabit it has been quickly getting older. The sameness of those books, furnitures, and decors only serve to accentuate just how much time has left an imprint on the human body and mind. As someone quickly heading toward the big 30, I just cannot bear picking up, or even looking at, the things that I was so familiar with when I was not even 20. The energies and optimisms of those days past are simply too incompatible with the realism that have set in my psyche in recent years.
The contrast of material sameness and humans getting old is unavoidably generating anxiety. The parents, once so young and enthusiastic, are, startling to think about, mere years away from proper retirement age. Contingency plans for in case of permanent diseases of senility, something that used to never cross the minds, are now a real serious subject that require real, serious discussions and preparations. A traveler, so prone to escaping home for extended periods of time, now really needs to think about those dangerous and potentially fatal "what ifs" when so remotely located from the family home.
Perhaps it is part of what is means to become mature. A younger self is so exclusively focused on the future: the career, the relocations, as well as all the potential excitements and challenges associated with future undertakings, that those that are left behind in that race toward the future is often forgotten or ignored. Only after years of racing forward on a chosen path does one stop and look, only to see the past stuck in time, withering away slowly with passing time. Only when that moment of reflection happens, a sense of nostalgia, and wanting to keep that past alive even in the future, sets in.
But the past is bound to change, even if it feels stuck in time. Even material things, looking so same over the years, slowly age from neglect. People's time is more fleeting. A short ten years can change a person from vigor and ambitious to complacent and timid. And if a person is left alone, without external influences to reintroduce at least some levels of enthusiasm, the person's mind will become mired in the mediocre status quo, stuck in the present, no longer caring about the future, and spend way too much time reminiscing the past as if everything happened yesterday.
It is a not a healthy reality. No matter what a person's current age may be, only the drive to strive toward a better future would be invigorating enough for the person to move forward. Only the prospect that the future still holds something more than what is available today can motivate a person to walk toward that future. In order for that sense of a brighter future to be had, a person would all the support s/he needs from family and friends, who will need to do their own parts to ensure that the person has something to fall back on as increasing age make attempts to change self more risky.
I, for one, feels like I have not strived to provide the best support I possibly could for my friends and family members. And frankly, given my continued tendencies to be all over the place, it is unlikely that this fact will change anytime soon. But in my own limited time I can physically spend with people from my own past, I may be able to do more to make my presence felt, even if it is just to help others realize that, even as one age, there is still many things to look forward to. Life does not automatically become more monotonous as one gets older and become less interested in changing the everyday routines.
Often, the idea of having to relive one's past is depressing because one feels that the past is past, and there is a clear break between it and the present/future. Yet, the past, however dark it may be, does not need to be haunting. It is the past that made one what one is today, and as such, one has certain responsibilities to not just preserve the past in all its glory, but to assist those that made the past what it was and continues to be. Just as those books, furnitures, and decors of the childhood homes need to be maintained in tip-top condition, so are the relations with people.
Contrasting that intransigence of things lying around the house, the people who inhabit it has been quickly getting older. The sameness of those books, furnitures, and decors only serve to accentuate just how much time has left an imprint on the human body and mind. As someone quickly heading toward the big 30, I just cannot bear picking up, or even looking at, the things that I was so familiar with when I was not even 20. The energies and optimisms of those days past are simply too incompatible with the realism that have set in my psyche in recent years.
The contrast of material sameness and humans getting old is unavoidably generating anxiety. The parents, once so young and enthusiastic, are, startling to think about, mere years away from proper retirement age. Contingency plans for in case of permanent diseases of senility, something that used to never cross the minds, are now a real serious subject that require real, serious discussions and preparations. A traveler, so prone to escaping home for extended periods of time, now really needs to think about those dangerous and potentially fatal "what ifs" when so remotely located from the family home.
Perhaps it is part of what is means to become mature. A younger self is so exclusively focused on the future: the career, the relocations, as well as all the potential excitements and challenges associated with future undertakings, that those that are left behind in that race toward the future is often forgotten or ignored. Only after years of racing forward on a chosen path does one stop and look, only to see the past stuck in time, withering away slowly with passing time. Only when that moment of reflection happens, a sense of nostalgia, and wanting to keep that past alive even in the future, sets in.
But the past is bound to change, even if it feels stuck in time. Even material things, looking so same over the years, slowly age from neglect. People's time is more fleeting. A short ten years can change a person from vigor and ambitious to complacent and timid. And if a person is left alone, without external influences to reintroduce at least some levels of enthusiasm, the person's mind will become mired in the mediocre status quo, stuck in the present, no longer caring about the future, and spend way too much time reminiscing the past as if everything happened yesterday.
It is a not a healthy reality. No matter what a person's current age may be, only the drive to strive toward a better future would be invigorating enough for the person to move forward. Only the prospect that the future still holds something more than what is available today can motivate a person to walk toward that future. In order for that sense of a brighter future to be had, a person would all the support s/he needs from family and friends, who will need to do their own parts to ensure that the person has something to fall back on as increasing age make attempts to change self more risky.
I, for one, feels like I have not strived to provide the best support I possibly could for my friends and family members. And frankly, given my continued tendencies to be all over the place, it is unlikely that this fact will change anytime soon. But in my own limited time I can physically spend with people from my own past, I may be able to do more to make my presence felt, even if it is just to help others realize that, even as one age, there is still many things to look forward to. Life does not automatically become more monotonous as one gets older and become less interested in changing the everyday routines.
Often, the idea of having to relive one's past is depressing because one feels that the past is past, and there is a clear break between it and the present/future. Yet, the past, however dark it may be, does not need to be haunting. It is the past that made one what one is today, and as such, one has certain responsibilities to not just preserve the past in all its glory, but to assist those that made the past what it was and continues to be. Just as those books, furnitures, and decors of the childhood homes need to be maintained in tip-top condition, so are the relations with people.
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