Parting with Problems

"you can't run away from your problems".

I still believe word choice is key. Its funny; our generation has changed the meaning of the word "cannot" so much, in fact, that it has almost completely morphed into a synonym for "may not". Now all I am able to imagine when I hear this expression is my mother with the "no" finger in my face, shaking it back-and-forth. And this time, against my character, I am not digressing and my imagery actually carries a point:

Up until recently, I thought that running away was something of a rebellion rather than ignorance. I would take a deep breath when I finally reached my "safe point" and convince myself that this had to be a distance no issue could aquire. And, yet again, I was wrong. For as the saying goes, we [literally] cannot run away from our past.

Once more, I would like to draw this experience toward Kundera. I recall a quote by him that says, "[people] shout that they want to shape a better future, but it's not true. The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past." But this is a problem. We try to change our experiences in life by running, replacing, forgetting; and ultimately we find ourselves in an "indifferent void" not of the future but of complete ignorance. Contrary to the quote, "ignorance is bliss", this new and futuristic "ignorant bubble" takes all of the power to control our own lives completely out of our hands.Imagine wrapping up your entire being in big purple wrapping paper and giving it to your coworker as a belated birthday present. So where does this lead us? Without the past, we are no longer humans. We are, for lack of a better term within my internal dictionary, highly functioning robots.

With this being said, I believe there is a higher reason for our inability to run away from problems: Simply, we NEED the past; the horrible, gut wrenching, heart breaking past. Because without it, we are like trapped souls destined, only, for our future in purgatory.

When we die, what we lose is never the future, but the past.