Moving On

All too often, within discussions of our past histories, I constantly hear this phrase: “I’m over it,” “I’m past that now,” or “I’ve moved on.” But what do we really mean when we say this?

The legacy of a crumbled relationship that can no longer be pieced together, an argument or disagreement with a friend or coworker that created an irreconcilable emotional rift, an egregious failure that led to acute shame and embarrassment. These things change us, whether we like it or not.

This mode of thinking goes hand in hand with the hackneyed mantra of “everything will be okay” that reflects the same mindset of just wanting the pain and suffering to end, and nothing more. We’ve preemptively decided that “okay” or “fine” is the easiest and most convenient escape from the emotional trauma. For most people, being “over it,” means forgetting about it. If we’ve already escaped that pain, why go back to it?

Because we are excessively fixated on merely escaping, we seldom take the time to reconcile how that event has shaped who we are today—how it shapes our decisions and how it has influenced the way we perceive the people and the world around us. Contrary to popular belief, truly moving on doesn’t mean you don’t think about the painful memories anymore. In fact, it’s quite the opposite; we unknowingly allow that past pain to continue to shape our future. And we have no idea whether it’s working in a positive or negative way.

Maybe a toxic relationship you’ve had in the past is causing you to be cynical or avoid intimacy. Maybe that horrendous mistake that you made caused you to avert risk in your life entirely. Maybe heavily falling out with your manager and impulsively quitting influenced your work ethic and perceptions of your future bosses.

We can't move on from the past if we don't understand how our past circumstances have shaped our present and future self. We concede defeat and allow the world to take its own course, and all we've assigned ourselves to do is react to whatever life throws at us.

We concede what minimal free will we had to begin with. No matter your stance on the degree to which we have free will, I think we can agree that at least the first two decades of our lives—give or take depending on the person—is purely defined by the whim of our circumstances. It’s very well understood in the psychology of personality formation that the complex interplay between an individual’s genetics and their environmental circumstances. Our socialization begins from the initial interactions with our parents, and then those shared with siblings, family members, friends, classmates, and teachers. We not only learned to conform to the existing social norms and cultural zeitgeist, but, more importantly, depending on the nature of that socialization and the events that happen in our lives, we start to form our conception of the world—our ever-morphing definitions of right and wrong.

Should you share that toy with your preschool classmate? Should you pay attention in class instead of doodling in your notebook? Should you study for that big math test tomorrow? Should you ask that person out to prom?

If you can even remember your answer to these questions you’ve probably asked yourself in the past, think about why you made a particular choice. Think about why it seemed right to you.

Did you honestly meticulously weigh the pros and cons of a particular decision? Did you rationally analyze whether or not your process of logical reasoning was sound, or if the evidence you were using in that reasoning was relevant? Did you consult your friends, parents, teachers, and coaches and have an extended discussion in order to acquire unbiased outside perspectives? Do you really think you did any of that as a fifteen-year-old, let alone as a toddler?

Or did you just do what merely felt right?

And then when we consider the scale—just how many of these irrational decisions we've made for ourselves in the past, thus creating an unquantifiable amount of personality change over the years—what free will is left, then? Yes—we made decisions when we were a toddler and a teenager alike, but we made those decisions under a decision-making faculty we had no conscious effort in producing. The truth is, until we have the self-awareness, the courage to confront the harrowing parts of our past, and the mental and emotional fortitude to understand it, free will is an illusion.

If we neglect to understand this complex interplay between ourselves and circumstances, we are making a choice to perpetuate this powerlessness and passivity that defined our youth.

If we think that “moving on” is fundamentally about forgetting the past, not reconciling the ways in which it has shaped us, we thus concede our free will.

Do we wish to navigate a chaotic world, where everything seems to happen with no rhyme or reason, or can we hope for something better?

With trial and tribulation, we need to constantly recalibrate. We need to stop thinking “moving on” is what we need, when precisely what we need is to stay where we are and look at ourselves in the mirror.