What Lies Behind

“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”

— Jane Austen

“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.”

— William Shakespeare

“The past can’t hurt you anymore, not unless you let it.”

— Alan Moore

Guess what I’ve been thinking about this week?

I’m currently spending a fair bit of time picking through the childhood of a close friend, not because I particularly want to, but because she won’t stop. That can become a very painful exercise. Much injury was inflicted, and today she cannot let it go.

Her recollections of her past are not inaccurate, so far as I can tell, but many years have passed, and the person who did her the injury either does not recall the facts as they were or, perhaps, is so far into denial that she is lying to herself through her teeth to preserve the tattered remains of her own self-image.

Perhaps you know somebody in the same boat. Perhaps you are. How do you fix that? I’m not sure you can.

The Value of History

Our personal history has value to us in the measure we understand it and can learn from it. But in order to understand our history, we must remember it as it really happened. That is not always possible. I have months and years of my life about which I have no real clarity. When people tell me I did this or said that twenty or twenty-five years ago, I frequently can’t be sure they are correct. That’s the way it goes: one person remembers an interaction this way, another remembers it differently. Seventy-hour workweeks, lack of sleep and the passage of time will do that to you.

Forgiveness is a blessed thing, but we can only seek or grant it when both parties agree about what actually occurred. Sometimes that’s simply not an option short of eternity. In such a case, what can you do but write off the injury? To my mind, conditional apologies — “Well, if that’s how it happened I’m very sorry” — have the substance and permanence of Kleenex. Coming from others, I find they have no value, and I try not to offer them for that reason.

When our memories are accurate, the occasional reassessment of history is of some limited value, but the benefits of revisiting our past are greatest when we learn more about ourselves. I can’t fix what other people did or said. Sometimes I can’t fix what I did, thought or said. What I can do is make sure I don’t repeat the error today. That’s constructive.

Done is Done

But in the end, Shakespeare said it right: What’s done is done. The apostle Paul wrote that letting go of the past is a mark of Christian maturity:

“One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way.”

When Paul talks about forgetting, he does not mean he’s had his memory wiped. Other passages forbid us to interpret his words that way. “You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. But … he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me.” There are many such examples in his writing. Paul’s memory was intact. He could still learn lessons from his own past and use them to instruct others. There are also many places in his letters where he reminds us that we too ought to remember certain things. Not all of these are happy memories.

Forgetting What Lies Behind

I suspect what Paul means by “forgetting what lies behind” is that he did not allow his clearly-recalled past to dictate, influence, or in any way affect his present choices. It was thoroughly dead to him. He did not try to improve on the old Saul in the here-and-now. The old Saul’s ideas and preferences were no longer an issue. Paul 2.0 could speak frankly and objectively about the sins of that earlier version of himself without wallowing in guilt, because those sins had been forgiven, forgotten and forever discharged.

You and I are wise to treat the past the same way.

One of my brothers frequently reminds me of the importance of giving up the hope of having a better past. There’s wisdom in coming to that place, not to mention a fair bit of peace.