Remember the Past

I try to not regret the past. In a general sense, I like where I am now; and it's my past that brought me here, in one way or another. There's no telling what the results would have been had the past been changed in some way, minor or major.

Maybe it would be the same. Maybe similar but in different ways. Maybe it would be vastly different, like worlds apart.

It's impossible to say because we only experience time one way, forward. We can only make slow moves towards the future, one second at a time; and we can never go backward. We can recall the past, but we can't alter it; except for perhaps in our own heads.

There's a great exchange in David Lynch's Lost Highway to illustrate that idea:

Ed: Do you own a video camera?

Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.

Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.

Ed: What do you mean by that?

Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.

Despite one's abilities to make their own version of past events, the fact remains that, what is done, cannot be undone. Unless the reality of a person's existence does not extend beyond their own body, which is unlikely, the person has made some impact. Their existence could be substantial, or it could be a mere blip on someone's radar; either way, an effect is made on the world.

Our existence, our past is like a running log, even if we try to remember things favorably and gloss over the negative things, the reality of our past remains there; like a dark spot on what feels like a different reality, a different person in the same body. As much as you want to take an eraser to it or just rip that part of the file out, it stays and it stings.

But after dwelling in sorrow of regrets, after using time to try to rethink what cannot be changed; we can only move forward. We can try to improve our future with what we do now.

And for the past, the only hope is that maybe senility will take the memories away.