Our past limits us in our efforts to have everything because we cannot change the past. What happened, happened. What we missed out on, we missed out on. As much as we desire it, we cannot go back and do things differently. However, we can change how we remember the past. We can change the way we define our past. We can define our failures as successes and our losses as gains. It is important that such redefinitions have some close relation to reality. People who remember their parents as being perfect are always likely to have their definition of the perfection of their parents disrupted by evidence of their human fallibility. A determined counting of one's blessings, past and present, brings no comfort when one's internal reality contains resentment, envy, despair and anguish. A valid redefinition of the past is possible only when many other things have changed.
