A Past Evolving

I’ve been thinking about my past lately.  That sounds so stupid.  As if my past were a soda can I left a few miles back.  When in reality my past clings to me like a shadow, ever present but constantly evolving as my direction, perspective, and shape changes.   I talked to an old friend last week and tried to arrange the jumbled puzzle of a slightly awkward and confusing day from our past.  By the end of our conversation our patchwork friendship was mended I suppose as the hurt feelings were forgiven and unsaid saids were finally said.  But our conversation left me feeling strangely guilty about my adolescence and the selfish choices I sometimes made.  I don't think I did anything gravely serious, but I feel bad that I may have hurt feelings or caused temporary pain.   

My thoughts led me to one of my favorite parts of one of my favorite books.  And here I share it with you.  It helps me to not dwell on the past.  It helps me to realize that the purpose of all agony, all mistakes, and all wrongs is to mold us into something more glorious.  And as my friend used to say, "Everything is alright forever."

”But what you ask of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”

“‘That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.’

-C.S. Lewis  The Great Divorce