The Past Has Moved Forward; Only You Were Left Behind
There’s this trend that has been going on lately. Pictures from a decade ago are being posted, and stories from that same year are being reminisced about. It is nostalgic, to say the least — to see people you’ve known from recent years having lived lives so unfamiliar to you. It’s as if you’ve known a completely different person. Perhaps that really is the case. It’s been a decade, after all; many things were bound to change.
Then the moment of self-introspection comes. You sit in your empty room, alone with your own memories of the past. But unlike the posts you’ve seen, yours passed on unceremoniously. And so, you couldn’t celebrate it. Because instead of nostalgia, you’re now gripped by an unsettling realization that your life — a decade of it, that is — has passed on in a disappointing manner. Yours weren’t as fun and cool as the others’; yours were either a fleeting blur of mundaneness or a half-forgotten war for survival.
By the time you realize you’ve let yourself wallow in the past for the hundredth time, ample time has already been wasted. In dismay, you let melancholy and self-pity to take over. Without you noticing, it’s been turned into a cycle you can’t seem to escape.
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But that’s a lie, isn’t it? It’s a lie you made for yourself. Because in order to break free from that cycle, you must first make peace with the past. The same past you are so eager to run away from. It is the past you hate but couldn’t totally let go of. Because there were so many things left unsaid about it, so many things you regret that you wish you could do or undo. So instead of facing it head-on and finally letting it go, you simply brand yourself a victim and run away from it. And in some ways, no one can judge you for doing just that.
Nevertheless, it’s been a decade now. And the world has changed and moved forward. Everyone’s constantly moving, and in a year or so, you’ll find yourself again, looking back and regretting. Because instead of living in the present, you’ve clung to a past that has long since moved on. Then you’ll wake one day and realize that it is you, and only you, who never left that same spot you were in years ago. Because each time you try to move — and you do move and change places — you return to the same place you started. And maybe some people will see that as something noble or steadfast. But the truth is far from that, because you know to yourself why you keep doing it. It isn’t nobility. It’s fear. In fact, it is cowardice.
Hopefully, in that same empty room, you’ll realize that things ought to change. That instead of retreating to the same place out of fear, you’ll take a leap of faith once in a while and live the life you’ve always envisioned. By then, you’ll make memories you aren’t scared to look back on, since they were made for the sake of truly living, not merely surviving.
And then, perhaps you’ll look at the next wave of throwback photos from a decade or two from now and won’t have to feel regretful of what’s gone. Nostalgia wouldn’t feel as suffocating to you the way it once did, for you’ve already relinquished the chains that were put on you with the key that you managed to forge along the journey. You don’t have to be left behind, especially not by a past that has long since gone and moved forward.
First entry of 2026. May we look back on to this year with a fond heart and a mind full of more wisdom.
