My Plans for the Past

American Psychiatrist, Irvin Yalom once wrote “sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past” and I was reminded of this again by the poet Sam Willetts:

My Plans for the Past

I often regret the time that I’ve devoted

to regret: thereby sustainably re-wasting wasted

time time and again. A psychiatrist

with glinting specs once said I had Tourette’s –

just because I told him I can’t help but curse

aloud over old shames, hurts, failures

and the rest. Tourette my feckin arse

(I said); I swear like that because it hurts;

because, although I try and try my best,

I’ve yet to find a way to change the past –

you know, to saw sawdust.

To get

the smoke back

in the cigarettes.

However, where there may be a linearity to the events in our lives, our memories, our emotions and adaptations do not adhere to such a simple time frame. And nor necessarily do they people and the relationships we have around us. How many of us have had the experience of feeling like a child or teenager again when visiting a parent or primary carer? Our childhood may be in the past, but what we learnt from it exists very much in the present. If you cannot put the smoke back in the cigarette, what can you do with the smoke?