Make A Good Meal Out of Now

Just live in the present and forget “the past” (remember the past is a reconstruction of information you have in bits in your mind) — only learning from the past; don’t drag fiction into the now — which is what the past is when experienced in the present. Yes, you are really experiencing it, but that’s what real — the experience now — rebuilding the past.

So, regretting and spending time now from then is useless; I mean, talking about it to understand it is helpful. And remembering good times is fun. But, feeling shame or sadness or regret about mistakes and missteps and misdeed is useless — at least after your initial reaction teaches you something about yourself. The thing to remember is you did the best you could at the time. That’s it. It’s over and not even “in the past” as we say. The past does not exist per se. It is a bunch of encoded images and feelings we store in relation to language in our cerebral cortex — to be reinvented each time we “re-member” — which I think is just a re-assemble the bits.

‘Remember’ means to put back into the mind — the mind being the work space of our consciousness. You put your ideas into the mind; think about it like taking food out of the fridge: you can throw it on the counter and complain about the bits that have spoiled, or you can cut that away, trash it and save the good parts for a nutritious meal. Similarly, if you didn’t cook such a good meal last time, you can stand there and stare at the food and think about that — wasting time “in the past”— or you can forget it and make a good meal out of now.