Use the Present to Close the Past

Feb 14, 2004, 12.00am IST
Neeraja Raghavan.

Why do unhappy events stay on in the mind? Why are we haunted by those episodes in our lives which left us grief-stricken, frustrated, resentful, hurt, guilty or upset, and not by those which left us happy and contented? Across the mind’s screen, unpleasant images of the past flash by more often than fulfilled, pleasant ones.
Perhaps the key lies in the word ‘fulfilled’. Fulfilment implies completion. It refers to something that is over, finished with, with no loose ends. In today’s computer jargon, that file would be said to be ‘closed’.

We need to click the mouse on the filename if we wish to open it. Otherwise, the file is safely tucked away inside some folder, somewhere: Part of the many seldom-opened files in the mental computer. However, the numerous haunting memories conti-nue as ‘current’ files. Something in each one of them remains to be finished. It may well be an apology that was due. It could also be an unwillingness on our part to accept a loss. It may well be that a part of the mind continues to deny the reality of that particular event.

With each ounce of resistance, the episode nags us even more with its haunting presence.

Even without such strongly evocative feelings, the merest twinge of regret about a past event (why didn’t I qualify for that post?) is enough to bring it periodically into our focus.

Whatever the case, that niggling file is always open in the mental computer screen. We call it to our attention, effortlessly. All it takes is a lull in the external hub of life for the file to flash painfully across our relentless monitors.

We can, at best, minimise those files. But they get restored with a mere touch on the mind’s button. And all those unwanted emotions sweep through the mind, creating havoc within us, even though the trigger is safely embedded way back in the past.

As sole operators of the ‘files’ that trouble us, we have it in our power to ‘complete’ those files and save them, too, in that folder tucked away in the recesses of the mind. But to do that, we will have to let go of some of the pride, hurt, guilt, resentment or whichever emotion is coming in the way of our ‘completing’ that file.

We will have to embrace the loss, be it of a person, possession or our own self-image. Far more important than any external manifestation of our closing that file — a mere verbal apology will not complete the file if we are still seething with resentment — is our own inner total acceptance of all that it throws up within us.

If we are unable to forgive that ‘cruel wrongdoer’, how completely can we embrace our own inability to forgive? If that humiliating loss of self-esteem is unforgettable, how lovingly can we accept that humiliated self within us? For, until we can do that, unreservedly and unabashedly, we can be sure that those incomplete files will keep rearing their ugly heads, from time to time.

Each religion has its own prescription for this kind of ‘completion’. Confession, forgiveness, mindfulness, conscious acceptance — all these are different ways of telling those open files to close. For this is one computer that never shuts down: Not even when we sleep. Our troubled dreams testify to that.

So each time you are haunted by an unpleasant memory recognise that it is your inner self’s way of pointing to you the unfinished business that you still have: It is up to you to make use of the present to close the past.