Today, the Past is Beautiful

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. ~ Virginia Woolf 

I have learnt to live fully in my present and to not dwell in my past. Not even look back for lessons ... for what good is picking on a corpse? I don't believe in love autopsies. But if I am to be affirmingly honest with myself, I have to admit that I still find myself shuttling to and fro in my weeks between the past and present.

I no longer dwell so much on the past that it cripples my present. I no longer dwell on the past hoping it was different. I just tend to look back and FEEL myself back to the present. Just watch myself as I time-travel ... to a happier time with my mother, with my father. I often find myself in tears when I do come back. I miss them and the simple life they shared with me. But I almost never look back on things like births and past birthdays and anniversaries and Christmases no matter how wonderful they were. I've never understood that. Am I torturing myself by visiting what makes me cry with longing? So far, I have been kind to myself to just allow the journeys with no judgement. I tell myself that these 'trips' into the past must never impair my todays. And as long as I decide that consciously, they don't.

And then here comes Virginia Woolf to explain it all to me so simply and so completely. Of course! It is a CIRCLE I am trying to complete. These emotions I am time-travelling to, are incomplete emotions. Incomplete stories. And they had no avenue back then to ever become complete .. because it is only the passage of time and of loss even, of some sort of physical end that could ever create the ensuing emotional closure.

The truth is I am not given to melancholy as an illness. As a truth seeker, I simply must pursue the closure, I must 'close the circle' around the significant LiFe Moments in my journey here on earth. I am looking for beauty in my life you see. And as Virginia Woolf so aptly frees me with this truth:

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

Suddenly, it makes complete sense why trips into my past no longer affect my todays. Because only today, is my past beautiful ~

i carry more of my parents with me today than i ever have, and yet ... i am also far more myself than i have ever been.
this is one of life's beautiful mysteries