LEARNING FROM THE PAST

Fr Jim Cogley

The precise way the past that is not resolved and integrated manages to replicate itself in the present and make our tomorrows like our yesterdays is quite mysterious. It even seems quite unfair. We are naïve to think that we always learn from experience, but we don’t. We only learn from reflection on our experiences and in this way, we grow in wisdom. While we say wisdom comes with age, the reality is that age generally comes on its own! Yet when we do reflect on our past and learn from it we find that it no longer exercises such a stranglehold over our lives as to always live in fear that what happened in the past is likely to rear its ugly head yet again. Those who run from their past generally find that it not where they thought they had left it but is always in the present and staring them in the face. Where they are in denial it becomes even more visible to others.

To try and evade our past, as so many do, is to erode our future. Our fears are rooted in our past and belong back there. Yet they haunt us in the present when challenges arise. When we refuse to face our fears and give in to them, our present world becomes smaller and smaller. Life continually presents us with challenges to grow and mature but this demands placing courage in front of our fear and exercising faith. The alternative is to stagnate. Most of us will have been hurt in relationships in the past but if we operate on the basis of ‘once bitten twice shy’ we never take the risk of reaching out and remain in

splendid but lonely isolation. Fear of failure can cause us to always play it safe but in so doing we not only never succeed but also compound our failure in the present.