Saturday, February 24, 2007

Life in the Rear View Mirror

Life in the rear view mirror.

"And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car. And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are"
Meatloaf.

Object in the rear view mirror always appear closer than they are. It is an optical illusion. It not only is an illusion when looking in a rear view mirror, it is as Meatloaf suggests, an illusion relevant to human life and our personal history. The incidents of the past appear closer than they are when you feel distressed and horrified by your personal history.

What are the issues associated with looking in the rear view mirror of life? Life must be directed by looking backwards to get some idea how we should operate in the present and future. Life is guided forwards, by looking backwards. But looking back has dangers that need to be understood and we need to remember that the perception of the past distorts the reality of the present, just as objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are.

As a psychotherapist with 26 years of hands on experience, I know you must look in the rear view mirror of life to heal. It is absolutely true that some digging into the past is essential for emotional healing. The issue is how much digging, and how much exploration is essential. And once begun, how do you stop the endless obsessing over the past having uncovered the secrets.

Woody Allen has made a career out of digging into his past. He has found the funny side of his neurosis and used it to make movies that are witty and entertaining. But how much of his behavior is valuable for the rest of us who have no need to make funny movies about neurotic people?

Why look backwards, and how far backwards do you need to look? Unless you have learnt from the past, you are bound to repeat the same mistakes. That is the human way. Unconscious behavior repeats itself over and over again, until we have integrated the lessons of the past and we no longer need to repeat them. This is the case for looking in the rear view mirror of life.

But having learnt from the past, when do we cease looking backwards? When do objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are? I suspect once you have become obsessed with the past you have gone too far. If the objective is emotional healing, and the behavior of searching through the past has become obsessional, then I would assume looking backwards has gone way too far.

In reality there is no past or future, there is only the present. Now is the present. The past is gone, and the future is undefined. There is nothing about the future that is real in the present. Yet we can become obsessed with the future and the past and miss the present moment. This is the great truth offered by Eastern religion. Western religion focuses upon the future (heaven and hell), while eastern philosophy teaches the value of living in the present moment, the “now”.

The concepts may be hard to grasp, but the consequences are large. All fear is a reaction to the past or the future. In present time nothing exists that needs to be feared. Yet we all live with fears. And all fears come from looking in the rear view mirror, where objects appear closer than they are. Fear is a clear distortion of reality, and it can only be healed by living in the present moment, which means giving up looking in the rear view mirror.
The important message to gain from this discussion is that while the past and the future may be intriguing, they are largely irrelevant. Present time is the only moment that exists and once you have gained that wisdom, you are capable of producing happiness for yourself. Without this understanding you are looking at life through the distortion of the rear view mirror. And you are driving your car forward while being distracted by the past.

No comments: