past and future – Time Travel Rescue

YOU can time travel and change the past.

The past lives only in our minds.

While we can’t physically move ourselves back in time to redo the past, we experience the past in our minds.

But the mental experience, now, after the fact, is as real as we get to relive the past.

The past can be a tough place to occupy. Full of regrets, anger, and hurt.

That’s not the past I wish to experience in the present. The present is all we have. We don’t want to spend time in the present being upset about the past.

We can change the past for the better. When we change how we see the past. Reinterpret and recomprehend the past. Then the past changes.

It’s time traveling.

If we learn to reinterpret and recomprehend the past in a more constructive way, then we can literally change the past. For the better.

That’s what Time Travel Rescue is about.

Acceptance

All my life, I’ve been told to “accept” this or that when I felt unhappy. I never really knew what it meant. I never “felt” what it’s like to accept. If something or someone really upset me, or worse, wronged me, what does acceptance even mean? How do I accept, and why should I?

Years ago, I felt miserable at a prior job. The daily routine bored and tired me. I stressed daily, and struggled to sleep. Fridays brought a short reprieve, and Sundays returned the dread of the work week. Dwelling on my misery and being upset with the the fact that I felt miserable at work didn’t help one bit. I just kept feeling worse.

Had I read my own blog post about deciding to be happy, then I would have understood that in order to be happy I needed to stop doing things that made me feel worse. Easy, right?! But it was hard. Hard to stop dwelling and feeling sorry about a situation. It still is. It’s human nature, perhaps.

What should I have done? How and what could I have accepted?

Lately, I wonder if acceptance means accepting the fact that someone or something upsetting crossed my paths, without dwelling and begrudging the fact that the event or encounter happened.

It’s done. I can’t reverse time to undo it. My life won’t improve by me stewing over it. Accept the fact that I was in a job about which I felt miserable. Fighting and getting upset at that fact simply made things worse.

But acceptance doesn’t mean that I sit passively. I wanted better, and my life can improve only if I act in the present or future to reach that goal.

Although I can’t control people or events, and I can’t change the past, I can control what I think about and what I do. I choose to think about ways I can live constructively and move toward a better future.

So, save the energy I used to spend on getting upset about the past and use it to focus on improving the present and future.

And then, the thing or event or person that upset me, that I found hard to accept, may turn out to be a catalyst for transformation. A blessing.

I think that’s what acceptance means to me.

We are One

The invasion of Ukraine shocked me when it started. Surreal. Putin invading Ukraine in 2022 reminds me of Hitler and Stalin invading Poland in 1939. Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that nightmares in history books and black-and-white documentaries can haunt us again, and so quickly.

And yet, the world may still emerge a better place. The free world has united against a dictator and empire that has invaded and brutalized its neighbors for centuries. The cycle of russia’s invasions and subjugation of other nations must be and will be stopped.

Ukrainians have suffered unimaginably under occupation in the 20th century, and again in the 21st. They defend their home bravely because their lives depend on it. They show unbelievable bravery and heart, young and old, on and off the battlefield. They show the rest of humanity what we’re capable of achieving and, in that process, show us the future.

The invaders commit the most vile and unspeakable atrocities, in Bucha, Irpin, and throughout the lands they temporarily occupy. I did not think human beings capable of such depravity in the 21st century. I now see that darkness will always exist perhaps even within all of us, so we the human race must fight darkness and defend our values.

The invasion of Ukraine is an attack on truth, peace, liberty, and the right to self determination. It is an attack on humanity.

We are One. We are one race, the human race. Therefore, the defense of Ukraine is the defense of humanity.

Led by Ukraine in her valiant defense, humanity is on the verge of changing the course of its history. This crisis highlights the worst, and brings out the best, across the world. We may wake up, finally. We may finally release the light within us.

Ukraine’s victory will be humanity’s victory. May Ukraine stay strong and independent. May her people live free always, and suffer no more collective trauma. Let us wake up from the madness of separation, release our addiction to wars, raise our level of consciousness, and let us be One.

Release guilt

Do you want to feel happier? Are you willing to do what it takes to be happier? If you are, then start releasing guilt. Let it go. Learn to release it.

Here, the words guilt and feeling guilty aren’t legal or technical. They simply mean blaming yourself for something that has already happened, regardless of whether you’re actually responsible, or even whether you were there.

The human condition

We have so many ways of blaming ourselves and feelings badly. We blame ourselves for things we did or didn’t do, and for things we said or didn’t say.

Some of us even blame ourselves for things that we know aren’t our fault. For example, how many children blame themselves for their parents’ divorce or anything else that happened at home? How many continue to do so even after reaching adulthood and learning that it’s not their fault? The may know, intellectually or logically, it’s not their fault, but they still feel or believe it’s their fault.

It’s not your fault because hurt feelings you experienced, witnessed, or even caused come from fear, which leads to insecurity or even anger on one or both sides. They don’t reflect either or both people’s true selves. There wasn’t anything wrong with you. We’ll talk about this more in future posts. But in any case:

The human condition has made the urge to blame very strong.

But what happens when we blame ourselves? Have we often or ever felt better from blaming ourselves? Not from my experience.

Feeling worse seems to be the only result of self-blaming. Feeling worse is the opposite of your desire of becoming happier.

If guilty feelings come from blaming ourselves, and self-blame seems to always make us feel worse, the why do we keep doing the thing that makes us feel worse? Remember that:

We are the thinkers of our thoughts. No one else can think them. Blame is a thought. So we, not the external world, generated the blame. This self-generated action always seems to make us feeling worse.

How can we become happier by doing something that always makes us feel worse? If you choose to be happy, and you commit to do what it takes to be happy, then you must try blaming yourself less.

The futility of self loathing

Plus, blaming ourselves and feeling worse about the past does nothing to improve the situation.

When we blame, we judge ourselves harshly now for something that happened before. What happened can’t be changed. Only our feeling about it can.

Our feelings about, and understanding of, the past are the only things that we can change about the past.

So blaming ourselves seems to be a total waste of time too! The act of blaming not only makes us feel worse but also wastes the time and energy spent on blaming!

Why keep doing something like that?

Do this instead:

What if we blame ourselves less, and use the freed up time and energy to do something to improve things in the future?

Falling out with a lifelong friend because of a big argument and the things you both said? Accept the fallout. Blame yourself less for the things you said. Now you know that blaming can only make you feel worse.

Blaming won’t take those words back. Blaming yourself takes time and energy away from making things right, from simply relaxing, and otherwise enjoying life. Blaming is a waste of time. Why do something that’s a waste of time?

Instead of blaming, think about what can you do now or in the future to repair or resurrect your friendship. The only thing we can change about the past is our feelings about the past. But we can do things now and in the future to make things better. Neither of you can take back what was said. But you can stop blaming yourself for what you said, apologize and do things differently in the future if needed, and start forgiving your friend for what he or she said.

And if there’s nothing to be done about that situation or relationship, then think about how you can improve other situations or relationships. Indeed, it’s better to do almost anything else. Even doing nothing is better than blaming ourselves and feeling guilty.