Learning or Not.

"I'm not as weird as I seem, if you only knew where I've been." --Jeanette, 2005

We all have a story. Where we've come from. Our parents have a story, where they've come from. Their story shapes our story, our story shapes our lives. Our story shapes our lives and our children's lives.

I remember musing on this when I was 17 years old but didn't know how to articulate it. I tried, though, I have a diary entry where I muddled around talking about children and the legacy left them by their parents.

There are parts of my personality that are likely from my great-grandmother and great-grandfather. I don't know what they are, but since my grandparents were a large part of my life throughout my teen years, I would imagine that parts of them and parts of the men and women before them touched me.

Someone this past week tried to tell me that the past shouldn't be allowed to affect us. That we can't live our lives in the shadow of the past. The choice of words used were hurtful. I understood what the person was saying, but I believe there's a difference between living in the past and learning from the past.

If you fail to learn from the experiences you've had, then what was the point of going through them? If you fail to learn and then accept responsibility for what YOU did or didn't do, wouldn't it stand to reason that you will repeat what you've done (or haven't done) before?

In the Bible, the Israelites repeated their mistakes over and over again. They would fall into the ways of whatever society they were living in, worshipping idols, when God kept telling them to only worship Him. Yet, they never learned. A quick search for the word "idols" in the online Bible returns these results: Link

My opinion, wrong or right is this ... a person who lives in the past is a shadow who will never reach their full potential. Living in the past is rather like a spiritual smothering. Gradually, you just die inside.

A person who fails to learn from the past is a fool. In order to learn, you have to examine. If you don't examine, you don't learn.

I pray that I'm not a fool.