…with due apologies to John Osbourne and with a slight twist in the tale!
Unfortunately we all do…look back with varying degrees of anger at what has happened in the past but can never be changed…An anger that is often born out of feelings of guilt, regrets (most often not even acknowledged), helplessness in the face of “what might have beens” and destroyed relationships that we didn’t at the time think worth saving out of pride, obstinacy and a refusal to face facts and accept people and situations for what they are and not what we would have liked them to be…
Life, as they say, is a bummer!
But it is what it is…so we all have different ways of dealing with the past.
Some pretend it never happened…
Others pretend they don’t care…
Some say they have moved on but often let slip stray phrases coated with bitterness…
Then there are those who allow their whole attitude and expectations (or lack thereof) to be coloured by incidents and people who have played important roles in their lives…
To me, the saddest change that takes place is when people turn away from the living who may have let them down and make heroes of those who are no longer living…
This actually happens all the time…
With icons who have died prematurely – think Lennon, Dean or Monroe…
Politicians who have been assassinated and who have left promises and potential unfullfilled – think JFK, Bobby Kennedy et al…
Long dead politicians and leaders who are deified and worshiped because the living ones have betrayed and let down people – think Gandhi and Nehru…
And, in everyday life, we have often turned to those who have died (especially if they have died before their time) in preference to the living…because the dead can never disappoint or let us down, they will remain all that’s good, kind and loving because we will never see them grow old and cranky, full of their share of human failings and foibles and, God forbid, who might have let us down also…
Unfortunately the world is full of the living.
People who we once were close to, whom we cared about… and who cared about us.
People we have thrown out of our lives due to misunderstandings, fights, disagreements, difference of opinions and expectations, people we look back with disdain, contempt, a harsh and unyielding anger because they turned out to be human…normal, standard issue humans with faults and failings and everything else that makes us part of the human race…
Life is too short to let the past rule our present. Most of us realise this when it’s too late to make amends, to repair the bonds, to re-establish relationships, to say let’s make a new beginning and not look back in anger…
And that is truly sad.
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