Looking backwards to move forwards

NEWSLETTER #8 | AUGUST 2023

This summer we took our three children and the dog to visit my parents, who still live in the house where I grew up.

Nestled in a small town in North Cheshire (or South Manchester, depending on who I’m talking to), the house is home to nearly three decades of memories that are fast being replaced by new rituals, routines and rites of passage.

After a chaotic week of garden football, rowdy dinners and wet walks, the cereal, red wine and grass were all gone, the white carpets were turning grey and the ipads refused to charge: it was time to leave.

The night before we headed home, in search of new cellars to drink dry, I went to a party hosted by my friend of 31 years, Rich, and his wife Jo. At one point our friend Gemma turned to me and asked ‘Do you miss living up here?’

As someone who generally believes my past is best left where it is - behind me - the question stopped me in my tracks.

‘I don’t know’, I eventually told her.

It’s a regular frustration felt by my parents that the older I get the less I remember about a childhood that seemingly remains so vivid to them.

In my daily life, I have a tendency to focus on the future at the expense of the past or present. A serial planner, I’m constantly scanning for new tasks to add to my ‘to do’ list. Ambitions to achieve. Projects to complete. A constant pursuit of productivity and progress.

Meanwhile my work as a Coach is firmly forward focussed. We begin with a desirable future relative to which we then locate your current position before charting a course from here to there and finally taking action in order achieve what you most want.

The point being, my personal and professional pursuits tend towards what’s next rather than what’s been. I live for tomorrow: a place of possibility and potential where anything can happen if you set you mind to it.

But Gemma’s question made me realise there are things I miss about ‘home’ that only became clear as I thought backwards and not forwards.

I miss the feeling of familiarity and a sense of belonging. I miss being close to my family. I miss my oldest friends.

And the more I thought about what I missed, the things that were behind me, the more preciously I determined to treat them from now on.

Being reminded of our history can hurt. The sadness of loss. The myriad possible lives not lived. Regret. Guilt. Nostalgia. Or just the simple fact of a life that passes.

But if we interpret those feelings as messages, decode messages into instructions and translate instructions into actions we can bring the past to bear positive influence on our present.

We can take pride in our achievements. Repair relationships. Cherish where we come from. Let things go. And perhaps most profoundly of all, use what we know of yesterday to make positive changes today.

So Gemma, thank you for your question. I’m now with Dickens: “It’s in vain to call upon the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”