The past is never gone

I’m beginning to get the rudiments of honest self regulation starting up in me.  I have always gotten things done more or less by whipping myself into compliance.  It is very unpleasant, and it sets up conflicts within me which over time make me vastly less efficient.  I can’t enjoy work under those conditions; I can’t open up to it, and let it open up to me.

And I am realizing that, while you can’t undo the past, and what is done is done, it is equally true that the past is present to our understanding.  We can inspect it and learn from it.  By understanding the past, we can engineer better futures.

And in the same sense that an apology cannot be sincere if the behavior does not change, likewise regret–as the inner form of an apology, that from which an apology flows–cannot be sincere if no effort is made to learn from past mistakes. 

People, all of us, are pattern forming organisms.  We repeat ourselves.  The power of habit has enormous survival advantages, but only if those habits are adaptive.  Sometimes we enter life with good habits.  Sometimes we have to earn them.  Such of course is my own case.