August 1, 2007
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Haunting Memories
Have you ever felt haunted by the past?
Have you ever felt as if the ghosts of your past experiences are ever
hovering around you tormenting you with their perpetual ephemeral
presence? Every word you say and hear, every silence, every thought
seems imbued with echoes of memories of things that have gone before.
What might otherwise have been a pleasant experience is spoiled by our
recollections. Where once we might have spoken comfortably, we instead
remain silent terrified of bringing back the echoes of things past gone
awry.What kinds of memories haunt us? The usual suspects.
Moments of trauma. Moments of doubt and fear. Instances where we were
ridiculed or attacked out of hand. The death and loss of those we cared
about. Mistakes we’ve made. Those times when we said the wrong thing or
did the wrong thing or failed to say or do a thing worth doing or
saying. The cruelty we’ve unleashed the anger we’ve suppressed. The
things we forgot when we most needed to remember them. Worse are the
moments perpetuated. Times when we made the same bad decision again and
again and again, knowingly but always wishing we would do otherwise.
Worse still are the single moments where we act in a manner so contrary
to our self image that we find ourselves conflicted with the knowledge
that a being we utterly reject lurks within us.How do we deal with these haunting memories? How can we get rid of them and move on and live a life unburdened by the past?
My
personal experiences hold no clues for how to do this. Every childhood
memory that haunts me I don’t think I’ve ever properly excised and at
this point they are so much a part of me that I doubt I ever will. In
any case we are almost always the worst judge of our own experiences,
least qualified to distill from them understanding that might serve as
benefit to others.Still, there may be one place we can look for answers, a place that I turn to all the time. Stories.
But
in this case we find the usual stories to be surprisingly lacking. The
problem is that stories always end at the end. The heroes are
victorious or the major conflict is ended. We don’t often see years
down the line how the characters are coping with the haunting memories
of things that went before. Usually conflicts are solved in a very neat
package. Everyone comes to understand and ordinarily forgive everyone
else or else the characters die so we don’t have to worry about that.
In stories characters rarely make a final decision to accept or forgive
and then feel conflicted about it or still feel pained by the past.
They are rarely haunted by memories and they rarely face an eternal
struggle to put the past behind them. Story characters have it easy.
Their memories only go as far back as the author chooses to create for
them and their troubles end when the author writes the last word and
everyone lives happily ever after. Not so for people like us.In the real world, the memories dominate. They are a pain in the butt. Epheremal,
transparent, hard to get a hold of. These are no villains easily
vanquished, no puzzle easily solved. If you face a conflict in the
present, someone says or does something you don’t like, you can fight
back, you can tell them to go to hell, or punch them in the face, or
you can attack back in some other way, try to show them the error in
their ways or try and convince them to think differently. There’s
something tangible you can latch on to. The present is a series of
problems to solve and enemies to defeat. But how do you fight a
memory? It lingers around us always, seems so unreal, and yet so very
troublesome. You can’t really tell someone to go to hell for saying
something three years ago that you didn’t realize how much it bothered
you until today. Well you can, but it wouldn’t have the same effect.
Likewise, it’s hard to broach a subject long gone in which you came to
feel months later that the conclusions drawn were dangerously
incomplete or that you didn’t express yourself in the way that you
truly feel. The past just sits their like a great cancerous lump within
the confines of your brain poisoning everything that comes after.Still
we might gain some interesting insight from certain stories after all,
if we look at them a little cross eyed and squint. The stories I am
referring to that might help us to understand our lot in life are of
course Ghost Stories. Ghosts share pretty much all the characteristics
of our memories and one can argue that there presence in stories
actually serves simply as symbolic placeholder for those moments in the
past that haunt us in the present. After all there is no evidence of
real ghosts in the world that could be the basis of such stories (or is
there?) and the stories have to have come from somewhere. It is
reasonable to think of ghosts in stories as just symbolism. They
reflect the trials we face in the real world dealing with the past.And
in most Ghost stories the ghosts are in fact dealt with! Cool huh? So
we can look at these stories and learn a little bit about how we might
deal with our own ghosts, to be at peace with our own demons. Thinking
back I can think of about four ways in which ghosts are typically dealt
with in stories. Let’s look at them one at a time.——–
1. Vanquished Ghosts
Sometimes you just have to beat the crap out of the ghosts.
This
is in fact the default response in stories. The heroes wield their
magical swords or staffs or special ghost killing guns and go to town
on the ghosts. They take them out. The ghosts are wiped from the face
of the planet never to bother the heroes or anyone else again. It
differs from story to story whether the ghosts are said to have had
their spirits erased from existence or simply driven to the afterlife
where they will find peace, but it hardly matters. From the point of
view of the real world in which the story characters interact the
‘problem’ that the ghosts posed no longer exists. They are simply gone.
And good riddance.How might we do the same for our ‘memory
ghosts’? You can’t stick a sword in a memory can you? Ah,but you can
still make the memory no longer relevant in your world. The way to do
this is straight forward. You simply forget. Just make it so the memory
no longer matters so that your spirit is free, so that you no longer
dwell upon it day to day.Easier said than done right? Well, in
stories it isn’t a trivial matter for heroes to beat the ghosts to
death either. Most of the time they need to use some sort of special
weapon or tool that can touch the insubstantial ghosts whereas normal
physical items can’t. So they bust out their ghostbuster guns or take up an enchanted katana or whatever. They find some tool that can reach between worlds and touch a thing that normally cannot be touched.What
tools might reach out and touch a memory? Hypnosis would probably work.
Sometimes shear willpower can be effective. But most often the weapon
of choice is quite a powerful one that serves a number of purposes
besides. Distraction.If you can distract yourself enough you
can prevent yourself from thinking about virtually anything. Buy
yourself deeply enough in other things, other concerns, facing other
demons, or enjoying other experiences and after a while you won’t even
remember that thing that was bothering you so much. It just kinda
slides out of mind where it can no longer hurt you. This is why people
when faced with the need to deal with past traumatic experiences often
find it expedient to busy themselves with something, anything to keep
their minds and bodies so occupied that they have no time to think and
no need to recollect. It can work pretty well. Sometimes.The
problem is that more powerful ghosts are never so easy to defeat as
that they can be taken out by a stab through the heart or single
incantation. The real villainous ghosts of our stories take a lot more
to deal with, and often the direct approach is the most dangerous
approach to apply to them. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, the heroes
may make the mistake of attacking the ghosts head on and think that
they have killed the ghosts only to find that the ghosts have possessed
the heroes and made them believe that they were destroyed. This is the
worst situation as the heroes now have to deal with a ghost that they
don’t even know is there. It can be a real pain in the butt to get rid
of a ghost that is possessing you if you aren’t even aware of its
presence.So too with the ghosts of our past. Vanquishing a
memory ghost might make sense if it is something trivial like say you
said something stupid at a dinner party that ruined the atmosphere, or
you once locked your keys in your car, or something likewise absurd.
You could let these memories haunt you and you could dwell on them,
beat yourself up over them, but why? Chances are everyone else will
forget them and if they don’t does it really matter? You can safely
forget these memories over time and you will be no worse for wear as a
result of it and just resolve to do your best going forward.But
it can be exceedingly unwise to try the same approach on a stronger
memory ghost. When you do, when you try to busy yourself and distract
yourself so much that the really devastating memories might be
forgotten, the problem is the memories are never really lost. They just
aren’t that weak. They are infused into every aspect of your being, so
no simple distraction will get rid of them. The best you can hope for
is to suppress them, bury them down deep so that you can interact in
such a way that it appears that they are forgotten. You can do this for
a lot more memories than you think you can, with perseverance and determination, but should you?The
problem is that we act in accordance with our subconscious prior to our
rational mind. So we might well end up ‘thinking’ that our ghosts are
vanquished only to find ourselves acting in unexpected ways. For example
we might be unexpectedly cruel or intolerant or feel ourselves angry or
exasperated with someone for no reason, or find ourselves being
excessively apologetic or trying to bend over backwards to do something
for others all without ever really knowing why it is that we are
behaving in this way. The very tone of the words we say may well be twisted by the past, and our choices may well be designed to create tension and conflict where we never even wanted them in the first place. There are ghosts that still haunt us and are
influencing our decisions sometimes to our detriment, but we don’t know
they are there so we can’t rationally assess whether our actions are
the best. Instead we act out of instincts driven by an undetected fear
of the past.This is a situation that it would be wise to avoid. Consider dealing with stronger memory ghosts using one of the other three techniques.
2. Secrets Revealed
Sometimes a mysterious ghost that has been haunting a region comes
confide in a human being. The ghost reveals his or her story telling
the human what it is that ties them to this mortal plane. The mere act
of revealing the truth and talking them over with the human allows the
ghost to finally let go of the things that bound it to this world. The
ghost travels to the other world at peace.In other stories, ghosts are terrorizing the world but there’s nothing
our heroes seem to be able to do about it. Attempts to defeat the
ghosts physically falter and fail and the ghosts are unstoppable. Until
our intrepid heroes through grueling research and study find out
exactly what it is that keeps the ghosts here in this world, the truth of what came
before, the wrongs that were done to the ghosts and brings it to light.
Once everybody knows the truth, why the ghosts were killed, the ghosts
relent in their assault and finally move on to the other world.Fascinating eh? Perhaps not all ghosts need be dealt with by sword and
spell when mere knowledge can serve as well. Can the same be said of
those memories running rampant terrorizing our minds?I think so. The entire therapy industry depends upon it. The idea being
that sometimes the thing we need to do most in order to move beyond our
pasts is to have an outlet. Someone to talk to and tell the absolute
truth to as you see it, whether or not they believe you or agree with
you or even care about what you are saying. Just the act of revealing
in some form one’s thoughts, one’s feelings, the things that bother you
and which you can’t get past, can help relieve the tension that comes
from thinking that your problems are locked solely within you.This sounds easy. Pick a random stranger, share all your problems with
them and then you are done. Ghosts gone. And that’s that. Heck you
don’t even have to look anybody in the eye and tell them the truth just
run a blog and write exactly what is bothering you and I’m sure plenty
of random strangers will commiserate with you or at least you can feel
the illusion that your truths are out there for the world to see. Or
you could rely on a trained professional taught to listen or tell it to
friends and/or family who care about you, or whatever. Talking and
sharing can be hard at times, but it is far from impossible, if you
know what it is that you want to share.The problem is we humans pretty much stink at knowing exactly what it
is that is bothering us. We could communicate for years on end sharing
our problems without ever really getting to the point where we truly
admit the thing that really causes a particular memory to haunt us so.
The ghosts of our past are tricky that way. Sometimes the problem
appears to be one thing when there are many other things lying beneath
it. Sometimes a problem has multiple aspects and many layers and the
act of revelation is a process of pealing back layers upon layers of
truth to get at deeper truths that lie below.Assuming we can do effective detective work and really figure out what
are the root causes that make us feel the way we feel and make the past
such a burden for us, then you’d think then all we have to do is then
tell a stranger and be done with it right? Sometimes that’s exactly all
you have to do. Sometimes that works perfectly. You bring peace to
yourself both by knowing the truth and by knowing that you haven’t
hidden it away deep inside. You’re like the ghost described above who
finally chooses to confide in a human being after haunting a region
unsatisfied for many years and then finds peace because of it. The act
of telling makes a conclusion more real and certain than it would be if
you simply were thinking it and less likely to be forgotten.Of course, just with those rampaging ghosts, sometimes simply having
someone know the truth is also insufficient. Sometimes a memory ghost
is not excised until specific people are
made aware of the underlying causes. Sometimes a memory ghost will not
find peace until the truth of what created it is known to lots of
specific people, maybe even the world in general. Why is that? Because
sometimes the ghosts are bound not by the acts that wrought them there
but the secrecy that surrounded them. The ghosts are not after mere
understanding and commiseration from others but justice for the time
frame during which the truth was held hostage and hidden. This is a
hard path to follow. To let one person carefully chosen why what we
feel and why we feel it is one thing, but to let everyone know? For
most of us the idea sounds so vastly incomprehensible as to be
virtually impossible. But who said anything about excising ghosts being
easy?Still, if this is the nature of your ghosts then be happy if they are
to be satisfied with simply letting the truth be known. When justice is
at stake, it is not uncommon for the ghosts to demand somewhat more.
Such as some form of atonement.3. Atonement
Sometimes a ghost persists in a region trying to find a way to make up
for the wrongs it has done, and ends up working with the heroes helping
them find the truth and then act upon the truth to save lives or help
people who otherwise would be harmed as a consequence of the ghosts
actions while living. This act of helping can be enough to help a ghost
finally find its way to peace.Other times a violent ghost refuses to let the people rest until they
make some gesture or engage in some activity that makes up for the
wrong that was done to the living being who died and turned into a
ghost. Only when the wrong is righted, the dark deed made up for will
the ghost leave the people alone and be able to seek a future in the
hereafter.Without a doubt the hardest type of memory ghost to deal with would be
one that requires some sort of atonement out of us. How do we know that
we need to atone? How would we even go about it? What sort of act or
gesture would be sufficient? It all seems so vague and impossible to
deal with.Worst of all the reason we are often conflicted about a memory, the
thing that makes it haunt us so, is that we are deeply conflicted about
the extent to which we believe it is a thing that should be atoned for.
If you were to say find out that you underpaid someone for a service
rendered then it’s easy to see that you should make up for it and make
amends. So you find a way to pay them back, equivalent or more for the
lack in what you provided. Maybe you take them out to dinner or
something.But let’s say you you say something that you really believe and the
person you are talking to takes it really badly and is deeply insulted
or hurt by your words. Now it’s different. You might well understand
that it was a terrible thing to cause that harm to someone but at the
same time you might feel conflicted because a part of you doesn’t think
the words you said should have caused such harm. You might think it was
wrong to hurt someone but not think it was wrong to say the words that
did the hurting. So you can make amends for the hurt, by apologizing,
but it might not be enough to excise the ghosts because you aren’t
really apologetic for the act itself.Situations like that and thousands of others besides make reconciling
ghostly memories through atonement tricky business indeed. You might go
through some elaborate scheme to do something to make up for a moment
in the past that went awry only to find that your act however generous
and incredible it may have been does nothing to release the hold of the
memory upon your daily life. On the other hand sometimes the simplest
gesture you did without thinking, reveals some truth about your nature
to you and is enough to relieve the tensions of a memory that
previously would not release its granite grip upon your soul.Atonement is difficult. Sometimes it requires an apology. Sometimes an
explanation. Sometimes a gesture of good will. Sometimes an act of
faith. Sometimes a wrong righted. Sometimes a poignant gift. Sometimes
an admittance of guilt. Sometimes a heroic act of courage. Sometimes a
willingness to let go. Sometimes a little bit of all of that and more.
And sometimes none of the above is sufficient.Atonement is difficult, but the good news is that it almost always
works. At least in stories, when the ghosts find the wrong righted they
virtually always are able to move on and find peace. And I think our
memories are similar. Things bother us when they feel partially
unresolved and when we feel we haven’t done enough to really resolve
them. We feel a deep urge to do something, to make up for the things
that went wrong and to find a way to forge a path forward unburdened by
the past. If the past is a thing for which we can and should atone,
then the act of atonement is a powerful force to relieve the pressure
upon us. Suddenly a ghost isn’t so daunting if we know we’ve already
faced it and did what we could to undo the harm we’ve caused and to
cope with the harm it has caused us.4. Friendly Ghosts
And when all else fails you just have to suck it up.
In stories the friendly ghost is the one you can’t excise, not really.
Maybe the ghosts problems aren’t yours to solve or maybe the ghost just
refuses to be let go. But that doesn’t necessarily mean an eternity of
terror and nightmare. Sometimes, the ghosts befriend the main
characters and become a part of every day life for them. The ghosts
didn’t find peace and they are still ghosts, but they get along just
fine with the heroes as long as the heroes understand what they are and
where they are coming from and so its all just no big deal. Ghosts are
out there. So what?We can pretty much do the same thing with our memories. There are all
kinds of elements of our pasts that there’s a pretty good chance that
we will never fully come to total grips with. Few of us are so well
adjusted that we feel no weights hanging over us, have no suppressed
memories, and are ever and always speaking and acting solely in
accordance with our thoughts and feelings bound to the here and now.But that doesn’t mean that it all has to be such a big deal. Memories
are after all in the end only memories. We may never be able to forget
them but we don’t need to let them terrorize us and we don’t need to
let them control our actions or govern our choices. We can accept
instead that things are the way things are and make choices rationally
based on our reasoning and our beliefs and who we want ourselves to be
taking into account the influence of the ghosts of the past on our
present nature.And you’d of course have to accept that there will be times, days and
moments or even months where the ghosts are stronger than usual, and
cannot be easily set aside. They’ll be there trying to turn you against
yourself. You’d just have to rationally recognize those moments and
work to deal with them, either by distracting yourself temporarily,
fighting to control your initial instincts more consciously, removing
yourself from awkward situations that invoke the memories and wherein
you might cause harm as a consequent, or calling upon other memories to
help alleviate the burden of the past. If a memory of a dead loved one
darkens a moment in a gathering, make instead a happy comment about
that lost one, invoke a good memory to push aside the bad. This can
bring not just yourself but everyone around you some degree of added
comfort.In the end if you embrace the memory ghosts in this way, incorporating
them into your life, they become just like old friends. Exasperating
and annoying friends perhaps, but friends nonetheless. You keep them
with you. You joke about them and recall them with a mixture of
fondness and rue. They never fully lose their sting. It still hurts to
remember them, a little, maybe a lot. But you accept that they’ll
always be there and you’ve learned to live with them and learned to
grow stronger and happier in spite of them.———
So those I think are the ways in which ghost stories might instruct us
in how to cope with ghostly memories. Are there other ways? Probably.
But I think these four are sufficiently instructive to help us in a
number of real life situations and serve as a starting point for those
who need to forge a different path through their own haunting memories.In all cases, coping with the past is one of the most difficult
components of the human journey. We are such imperfect creatures that
we are ever likely to continuously conjure up ghost after ghost to
haunt us from day to day. What matters then is how we learn to deal
with them.
