You are not the Past

Matthias: What is it you want?

Quaid: I want to remember.

Matthias: Why?

Quaid: So I can be myself. Be who I was. 

Matthias: It is each man's quest to find out who he truly is, but the answer to that lies in the present, not in the past. The past is a construct of the mind and fools us. The heart knows who we are. Your answer lies there. 

Total Recall, 2017

When I heard the above dialogue while watching a movie on a flight, I had to stop the movie and rewind a few times to write it down. How often do we allow the past to construct who we are, when in fact we are a new person each day with new choices to make. How often are we stuck with this idea that who we are is a composite of everything that has happened to us, when, given our mental abilities, we have the freedom to decide who we want to be. That's a hard thing to take. We are free to choose how we want to respond to our circumstances, and after all, isn't that what a person is? We are creatures that respond to external stimulation. One person is not able to see beyond their conditioning, they are like Pavlov's dogs, while the other takes each situation as it comes and adapts a new response. We are stuck in the past and use it as a lazy way to respond to the world. It is when we drop the past and see the world as it is that we are able to exist at a higher level. We can think the world is a conspiracy to undermine us, or a conspiracy to aid us in reaching our objectives. Both may be equally wrong, but which is more productive? 

From this day forward, I will look at events from a different perspective. One that comes from the idea that these things never happened to me before. My response can be one of love rather than one of, "Here we go again." How much more rich could our lives be if we didn't simply respond based upon our conditioning? Be well.