I used to think that the past was the most important thing we could have, and in a way that still makes sense to me. The past is what you know, and it's who you are. You can't know the present or the future, but you know your past. Your past experiences are what you use to learn and make decisions. People say "I'm a nice guy." or something to that effect, but to me, what they're really saying is "I've been nice to people frequently in the past, so I will probably continue to be nice to others in the near future."
I don't want to say that I used to live in the past, but that's essentially what I was doing. I was constantly comparing my current life to how I remembered my life farther back to see if I was happier, smarter, or if life was just better in general. But that was not true happiness, it was relative happiness.
The bad thing about "living in the past," like I was doing, is that it makes it really hard on you to accept change. When change enters your life (maybe something like college), there's nothing to compare it to, and you don't know how to feel about it. Mostly, I felt robbed. Almost everything that I used to have was gone. The things that I remembered made me happy weren't there. For a while, I didn't think I had much to make me happy in my life. Most of my friends were gone, and I would no longer stand out intelligence or music-wise. This led to what I believe has been the biggest epiphany of my life:
Change is merciless, but it is not always bad.
Change will enter your life, and it doesn't care how happy or sad or willing you are to let it in. And the more accepting you are of change, the easier it is on everyone. My new view on change also made me view the past in a different light, so here is a jot list of how I now view the past:
-The past is still one of the most important things you can have.
-The past is still what you know and who you are.
-Things will never be just like the past, so there is no point in trying to recreate it.
-There is too much change in life to keep living in the past AND be truly happy at the same time.
-The past is most useful as a tool for learning, not as a manual for the rest of your life.
Once I learned to accept the change that came into my life, I was finally able to see how happy I am now. I think that my views of the world and what I want in life have become slightly more hedonistic. I go out with friends on whims more often. I've noticed that I take a more "day by day" approach to things, but still have short-term and long-term plans. I don't dwell on the past as much as I used to. I still treasure it dearly, but I've realized that the past shouldn't be what makes me happy. That is best left up to the "present." (Technically, the "Present" is just the most recent past that you have, because by the time you process it in your mind its no longer the "Present," but that's too picky.)
So with that in my conscious mind, I will no longer strive to be happy in terms of the past. The past taught me what makes me happy, and I know now that I don't have to be "happier than" I used to be, or "just as happy" as I have been. I can just be happy.
And I can finally move on.
