When I got married, a long time ago, all kinds of relatives approached me to give me advice on my wedding day. One of them was not to look back when I left home. They explained that it is not good, that tradition says to look forward, otherwise you will go back to where you started. As it seemed to me that I was the one to decide, rather than kinfolk superstitions (which we all mocked, when we were young), I looked back.
I remembered this when I listened to the podcast of a psychoanalyst (Jordan Peterson) who drew a parallel with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. A family that left that realm was advised to not look back. The wife looked back; her body disintegrated and was transformed into a pillar of salt.
When we happen to leave a relationship, whether personal or professional, our sight remains focused on the place, the situation, the person we separated from. We get stuck in the past, our mind does not detach, it does not work like a book where certain chapters close and others open. It seems that after a relationship we do not mourn for three or six months, but for a permanent time. In fact, this is a state of confusion, one of suspension – as if a part of us says goodbye and the other one stays there, suspended for a long time, maybe too long.
I know a few people who could not move on, they remained stuck in a relationship that ended many years ago. They could not let go of their part of the relationship.
Unfortunately, time is not so patient and it goes by in such a way that one day we realise that ten years have passed and the lights of the show that we are part of have long been shut. Looking in the mirror, we risk to get scared of what out character has become in our script.
If we look back for too long, the odds are high for our soul to turn to stone on an empty stage, and our life to pass like sand between our fingers, with an empty and outstretched hand, extended in a gesture of perpetual waiting.
As it happens, the relatives’ superstitions came true. I did not get stuck there but that does not mean I did not get stuck in other situations, then managed to free myself, and then back to square one.
This takes me back to a book that I received as a gift from Edward de Bono: ‘Why so stupid? How the human race has never really learned how to think’.
My invitation to myself and to all the people who are dear to me is to not look back. To leave our past in its place, without wearing it like a flower pinned to the lapel. Nostalgia should be taken in very small doses.