Is it ever a good time to LOOK BACKWARDS?
I’m going with yes but depends on your why. Perhaps it’s unfinished business, an opportunity not quite realised, I’d forgotten how much fun it was but now it’s gone. Are you feeling a sense of loss? We all know the saying you can’t join the dots until you look backwards. I am suggesting a few over-the-shoulder peaks can help. The ones that save a motorcyclist’s life when at the last microsecond he sees danger? Can these visual glimpses and emotional slices which gaze into a remembered past be a nudge or at least a way of guesstimating where the future could be going? The same way a guided missile hits its target by adjusting away from the wrong path and not by following a defined trajectory. Can this ability to see backwards offer a window to possible futures albeit a streaky view opaque by experience? So how would you look back? Maybe in anger as the song goes or perhaps as victims not wanting to relive. Is it a mature realisation that fundamentally all things are in our control and we either failed to or failed not to do. Our memories are notoriously unreliable, changing slightly with each recall and yet immeasurably powerful. A quick flash will offer (fill in the blank) about your perceived past. I am not considering vulnerable states where we ought to have sought out help or somebody should have intervened and it didn’t happen. This is a common story, a shameful situation that thankfully society is changing, becoming aware and culturally accepting of neurodiversity. I’m not going to think about it too much but I’m going with my core, my gut where a trillion little brains in my microbiome have offered up an emotional feeling and for me, it’s presented as unfinished business. This is my gut feeling and I’m trusting the tag team running my limbic cortex. What got in my way? I think I know but that’s not for today, what is, is that I am setting aside a version of the past and saying hello to unfinished business with a beginner’s mind. MISSILE LAUNCH IMMINENT