Are We Allowing the Past to Determine our Future?

One warm spring afternoon as I pumped gas, a guy approached this woman on the other side of me, asking her for money. "I'm a former marine," he said, without hesitation, and then muttered something about being down on his luck. She looked slightly shaken with gray and brown hair strands peaking out from behind her ears. "No. I'm sorry," she told him dryly. "I don't have anything to give you." After he left, she glanced over at me with an uneasy smile, you know the kind of look someone gives you to commiserate.

"Why didn't he ask you for money?", she said. "Maybe he didn't see me," I shrugged, with a quick but reassuring expression. "Well, you know, I've been burned trying to help someone before. This guy jumped on my car downtown, so I just can't," she continued, shaking her head as if my validating those feelings would absolve the guilt and uneasiness she carried.

I nodded silently as she opened her car door, but something about the weight of those words, the hesitancy flickering in her eyes, still lingers with me. I suppose it's forced me to confront a question: How many of us are holding on to old traumas, which are blocking our ways of seeing not only other people, but our own capacities?

In order to free ourselves from the past we must be willing to face it, and wrestle with the enormity of its impact, then slowly, begin the work of inner healing. However these acts show up for you, whether it's through prayer, meditation, journal writing, talking with friends, etc. The act of expressing our hurt helps us transcend it.

Believe me, I know this is easy to say and tough to walk out, but I promise you, breaking with the past births an excilerating liberation; you are no longer bound to the shackles of hurt; love, abundant and radical, life affirming and deep, begins to flow. And this, my friends, is a beauty no one can take from you.

Live In Color,

E

💕

Celebrating Beauty in Every Moment:

http://liveincolor.org

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

- Albert Einstein