“All healing is reinterpreting what you believed has happened to you”.

Since my divorce finalized in 2017, I’ve reflected on my past relationships, and what I’ve learned from each person that I’ve had the grace to have touched my life. Following each relationship is the inevitable sadness, guilt, shame for the mistakes that I felt I was responsible for. Then there’s the inevitable regret of what was and what wasn’t. For me, it’s the time also when I wonder if our relationship can be reconciled. Can we move on from the pain and hurt of the past? Reconciliation never works if it’s a simple rehashing of what happened.

Humans are not static. We can grow and learn if we choose to. Each day is truly new. We are reborn with new potential for the day to turn out differently than the day before. A good indicator of future actions is reviewing past behavior unless there is a commitment to improve. We can refuse to be defined by our past, if we work towards changing and transforming ourselves.

Perceptions, emotions, and communication are the three problems which contribute to the human dilemma. We have memories that are buried deep, so deep that we may not remember, from this life time and lifetimes before. Most of our actions are habituated and driven by past conditioning and we sometimes don’t know know why we behave as we do. Awareness and mindfulness of every action we take is the practice we must cultivate in order to live in the present. Otherwise, we are just corpses that live out the days without significance, guaranteed to repeat the same mistakes.

We must close one chapter of our lives before we can start a new one. But life isn’t always so neat as closing a book when we’re finished. We are humans with emotions and memories. I think that’s why it’s so important to celebrate milestones. We should mark occasions that are worthy of celebrations and worthy of reflections. Birthdays, job and career changes, job losses, new jobs, relationship break ups, all of it. Nothing is a waste of time if we can learn wisdom from it.