WHAT IS THE PAST FOR YOU?

Here is a question I came across:  

Is the past an asset or a liability for you?

This definitely got me thinking.  Why?  Because our past never leaves us.  It informs our present more than anything else.  How we were raised, whether we felt loved, what experiences we survived, of what we are proud and of what ashamed.  A long list.  Our past lasts all the way up to this morning.   

And another reason:  we are part of the past of others.  Is our contribution to their life an asset or liability?  I've never exactly thought of it that way before. 

In general, I'd say my childhood is a plus.  We were truly last-century middle class.  Went to public schools, owned a falling-down-well-loved house, lived payday to payday--all the cliches.  My dad started college the year I did; he worked all day and went to class at night.  My mom taught school.  They both loved me till the day they died.

I could have begun differently, however.  I could admit that for a time my dad drank too much and all that entails; that as a newlywed with two babies, not realizing what my mom was dealing with, I was too hard on her.  A different picture, including my own insensitivity. But I seldom think of it that way.  It's all in how we construe things, isn't it?  

A colleague was mistreated as a child.  Then she became a professor and a feminist and a help to many.  Would she have achieved so much without the drive to overcome her past?  If someone grew up without enough to eat and became an advocate for the poor because of that, was their impoverished past an asset? Someone else I know was raised in a loving home with nothing lacking.  This person has now overcome an addiction that began early on.  Might a life of privilege have fostered a sense of entitlement that contributed to these failures?  Or are they unrelated?  Is the past asset or liability?  I think this person would say asset, that the past provided the character to overcome the addiction. 

Or perhaps most of us would say both, times that lead to despair and times that produce strength.  We know that traumatic pasts can give rise to post-traumatic growth--positive psychological changes that result from highly challenging situations. The most dreaded losses, for example, can inform an appreciation for life.  Personal growth is in fact common after overcoming hard situations. People who have been tested are wonderful people.    

An asset is something valuable, not necessarily a synonym for good.  A liability is a disadvantage, not necessarily a synonym for something bad. A moneyed past, for instance, can be an asset or a liability.  Combine these thoughts with the gift of forgiveness for great wrongs as a path toward peace.  Not condonation, but a decision to forego revenge.  There's no eye-for-an-eye in forgiveness.  Certainly, my mother forgave my father the years he drank.  He lived to 94 and was sober the last 45 years of his life.   We should forgive sins (even our own).  I have, and I hope to have been forgiven in return.  

Each of us is a part of many people's pasts.  Children, neighbors, friends, even strangers.  I would like to bring value to each life that I touch, although I am certain that I have not. A smile or kind world or compliment, simple eye contact, can make a morning better.  A harsh word or ignoring someone can affect their mood and even self-esteem.  In a parking lot incident, an angry driver called me a name.  It took a deep breath to remind myself that the driver had the problem, not me.  But for that moment I felt diminished.  This ugly event is now part of my past.  Can I make it an asset somehow?  

These are observations.  I don't have a moral or conclusion or advice.  Often our thoughts, like life, cannot be tied into a bow.  Nothing wrong with that.  

                                                                   Nina Naomi