This topic had been lurking in my mind for a long time now… Here I will talk of people who have had a past they want to forget, and think that they have… but actually they haven’t! Read on… 
I have seen a lot of people who think they have “moved on”, but they keep lurking in the shadows of the past… Every single thing they did together, Every single place they visited together, takes them back and fills them with pain, they seem to have forgotten… They see someone on the road, who looked and talked just like her, and the sight disturbs them… Not just this, the smell of her perfume on someone else opens up closed chapters… And these people actually have “moved on” - buried the feelings somewhere in the backyard and are ready for new prospects….!!
I sometimes ask myself, is this “moving on”?
I find this rather silly! Now, I may be talking pure theory, without an experience to back it up with… But, trust me, I have given this quite some thought… And I believe, that merely burying old feelings and taking on new ones will not help! They will act only as temporary recluse.. I call it temporary, because, if and when in the future, your past comes and stands in front of you, you will find yourself crumble! The skeletons in the cupboard are bound to disturb… If not now, then sometime in the future.
This approach of handling the past, is an escapist way!! You can not run from your past! You can not! So, what can one do? You need to let the feelings engulf you completely. Dont fight them… Dont push them away… Accept them… As part of your self. As part of your being. Now, this may be a painful process. But, you need to understand that, in order to avoid this temporary pain, you are making yourself vulnerable to a life-time of restlessness and intermittent pain!
So, accept your pain… Deal with it… Face it in the eye… Welcome it as a part of you… Do NOT avoid it or try to bury it… that will not help!
The next time your past comes and stands in front of you, if you can meet the person in the eye and smile… That is when you have moved on
16 Comments
Bang on target Nova!!!!
Nice picture to suit the post title. Good search work baby
That’s correct that one has to accept the facts and not escape as escaping is never a solution.
“”86,063 souls have seen the world through my eyes
“” — is incorrect way to show the numbers.
I am ‘one’ soul coming to visit your site again and again that should not count me as ‘4 souls’
Samje ma’m??
I see it this way: Our being is a building (as in imaarat) that keeps growing as the bricks of experiences are added constantly. Do we ever remove the old bricks to add new ones? No way.. they make the base of the structure and the rest of the building is standing tall just because of those bricks/concrete in the base. And I really like this concept.
@Anonymous: Hehehe understood mam!
@Kanan: U r right… Thats y they should not be buried or thrown away….
Good One… Nicely expressed as well… Have been thinking about writing on this topic for long… but somehow… I havent been able to…
What u said is right.. can be summed up as “There are no shortcuts for anything not even for pain”.. You have to go thru it the hard way to experience it… always…
One word for that: “Indifference”
Well if you dont try to move on, you just accept it as a part of you, you wont move on. You wont even let the other person move on by clinging onto him/her. The way to move forward is not to accept it, fight it. Even if the smell of a perfume opens up close chapters, at least try not to live in those, not to think of those.
When we accept and stop trying, we accept defeat
Sorry Nova but do not agree with you on this one. The key is not just to face and fight it…the key is time… with time, the thing can be sufficiently in the past to be able to look at and accept that it existed…but does not exist anymore… “THAT IS MOVING ON” not fighting the pain or letting it drown you…but accepting your past foe what it eas. Life changing/destroying pain cannot be handled the way you suggested… your whole life changes after it…it takes time and courage…but the healing process cannot be fast forwarded… in the end …. it takes TIME.
Well… it is choice….
Else we won’t get a Deva..Paru..
This was pretty interesting. I was sort of confused and not sure of Nova’s views, but was also not able to reject it. I guess Anamika solved my dilemma..
I must say that I agree with Nova regarding accepting the reality of the situation and not denying your pain, but , as Anamika said, it does take time!! So, it’s the combination of both which will help you evolve from your past relationships
Hey it was a nice write up to read. Even though it sounded particularly towards the failure in a relationship,this thoughts are really very helpful in all kinds of ups and downs in our life. ‘m not sure whether i did a wrong reading excersise through your passage by thinking it as an issue with the relationships. But some where it says ‘who looked and talked just like her’ , which forced me to belive that its about relationships. I donno whether you intend to denote ‘her’ as the downs or sadness in our life(i’m purely a feminist
).
anyway keep it up but often you find critics like me
Hey Sageer: No, here “her” is an ex-girl-friend… denoting that when the guy sees any girl, he sees his ex-gf in her… implying that he hasnt “moved on”
everybody has their own way of taking things..some r comfortable facing them while some are not… fact is, there is nothing like moving on in life… cause there is nothing that we generally forget…
usually, we say i’ll nvr forget you… but the fact is, we generally dont forget anything.. only thing is we try not to remember them.. thats all! somethings are always there at the back of our mind,,,,but we r successful if they remain only at the back of our minds.. rather than bringing back fresh memories of past!
Thats a very true passage… I read something on forgiveness with a similar slant… Basically by forgiving someone you are freeing yourself from the impact they have had on you. Harboring the things you cannot (or wont forgive) only really effects YOU. You should view forgiveness as a gift to yourself, and much more about your ability to move on than forgetting about what someone has done to you…
Hope that makes sense.. This is a good article and very true…
Hey Nova!
Nice article, nice topic! Nice picture. I was wondering, could you tell me the name of the photographer, if you know it, or where you got the picture from?
***kira