Blog #6 - Serena Cecere

"Looking back, a person risks losing hold of the present while being confounded by the past."

I don't think there's anything more true than that statement.  So many people get lost in their past.  People I think often look back most on the times that they felt. The times they were either on an extreme high, or an extreme low. The times they were either so overwhelmingly happy or so incredibly sad. They focus in on these moments unfortunately because they can't get past them.  When you go from waking up everyday being that happy, and suddenly it's not there, you dread every new waking day, wishing you could go back and feel that sensational joy again. You keep questioning where you went wrong and how things could've possibly changed so fast and why you no longer deserve that happiness, that you'll end up doing nothing but live in the past trying to figure out how and why it happened to you. Being extremely low is just as awful.  When you get sucked in to being so sad and depressed all the time, it's often because you're unsatisfied with the way something turned out, or whatever your case may be. It only gets worse because then you go on to blame yourself for the mistake made and you can't help but fasate on the past and how it made you feel so high just to take it away from you.
When experiencing either of these times, if you notice, there's a common factor of you blaming your past.  When you become so focused on the past you're not 'carpe diem' or seizing the day, you're dreading it. There's a song by Passenger that literally says "life's for the living so live it, or you're better off dead". That may sound harsh, but think about it. Honestly. If you're not living in the present because you're so upset over the past, you're wasting today. You're giving up the wonderful opportunity of being alive and getting another day, that, by the way, so many people are not able to say, because you're  too busy drowning in self pity that you become ultimately, emotionally dead. Looking back on things you can't change is a waste of time, you need to learn to accept it and move on. It's so ridiculous to me, that people get so caught up in their emotions and on things that are literally done and over with that they ruin the opportunity they have to live. I don't know about you, but there's plenty of people I could give that day that you're going to waste to. So I agree, you lose hold of the present by looking back to the past.