Today I’d like to discuss the importance of the past.
When I was a teenager, and I read the blurbs on the books that talk about digging into the mysterious past of the protagonist, I wasn’t exactly interested. What’s so interesting about the past?
Last year, older and supposedly wiser, I went back to the city where I grew up. Walking through the old house that was partially crumbling I felt part of myself that I had shut away when I was in Australia instantly come back to me. I had spent half my life there afterall, and just by walking through the house I was regaining part of me that was forgotten. There was a calmness in knowing what I did here, knowledge of the city and how things work, a strength that comes from the support system from friendly and familial relations. Invisible source of wealth that is buzzing and humming and so close now. Accessible.
That was when I realised the importance of the past.
In particular, the importance is in three points:
- It gives us awareness and perspective about ourselves, and guides us for the future
It informs us about the environment and stimuli we grew and how we came to be. It can show us how we used to make decisions, why we carry out our decisions in certain ways. It helps to explain who we are, and in some rare cases shows us who we were meant to be through self-fulfilling prophecy (the danger is, of course, being misguided into inaction and simply waiting for the wealth to fall on us). By recording and being aware of this, it helps us steer away from things that affect us negatively and generally make better decisions in the future.
2. It tells us of possibilities and shows us pathways to success
We can wach and draw on the strength, wisdom, wittiness, cleverness, (wickedness) and opportunism of those we wish to emulate. We can mimic and learn about pathways to certain successes, or apply similar thought process in our new and changed environment.
3. It is a fountain of wealth and strength in aspects of: knowledge, family and relations, personal wealth, ideas and inspirations
Besides what I illustrated in my first example of going back to China, there is generational wealth and culture that is invisibly built up and can only, at the time, achieved by passing down knowledge and ways to do things through human example. E.g. Why is a family line of doctors in that small village so good? Because they’ve always been servicing that area, and are familiar with every type of ailment that has happened in that particular area due to the unique geography and weather of the place. This long line of knowledge and samples cannot be accrued in one single lifetime, but our long line of past will affect a lot of our small habits.
We’re making history here for the future, dear readers!