Connecting with the past can sometimes help to get clarity about the future.
Throughout our life, we all have different stations we go through, a bit like being on a train journey. People come and go, and we change cycles of people we interact with several times. Sometimes however on this journey, we cross paths again with people we thought we did not connect to in a while. However, sometimes those people start to suddenly play a bigger role in our lives again. This is exciting as it allows us to reflect again on times way in the past and it can also answer a lot of questions we might have about the future.
I recently had this with a visit of a friend of mine that I know from university and had not seen in a long time. This time of my life was a very happy one and it was great to reconnect about it again. So, you might ask yourself why is this so great?
A lot of times, we struggle to think about the past and specially to reflect on it. This might be easier when we think about happy times, but it is also important to reflect on tough ones and to try and reconnect with people that might have helped us through those.
I will give you an example. In my twenties when I was at university, I had no ambition to have children or a family. Now, when I connected with that friend again I very much do and am a new mum going through a lot. That obviously changes the interaction with my friends, especially when they already have children themselves. It is therefore great to reconnect to some of them, while being a very different person and checking in if it still works to build a relationship. If it does, those people start playing a larger part in our lives again and even can develop into serious helpers. Of course, it can also go the other way round and people that we were close with, that don’t have children we lose track of as the connection is missing.
What is great as well about those meeting again is a level of reflection that automatically happens. Reflection on the last but also the realization that we have developed moved on and are a different person all together now. This is also vital to understand the future and see what person we want to become moving forward. Those meetings from the past allow us to check in with ourselves and see if we have developed into a person we want to be or if we need to make changes in order to move on. To connect to our past with people that were part of the journey can therefore always help to move forward.
In conclusion, connection with people from our past can be very challenging but useful at the same time. It helps us reflect on ourselves- compare us to ourselves a few years back and check in if we are on the right path to move forward.
