Being Erica Season 1: Living in the Past (early access)
The moral case for understanding why you're trapped in the past.
Most of us remember the things we did in the past.
It's one of the down sides of having a memory. We can think about what we did and wonder if something better would've happened if only we'd made different choices. How would our lives have turned out if we'd said yes to the date we really wanted to go on but were too nervous to say yes to? Or gone to that job interview and gotten the job rather than staying home because it felt too big for you? It could even be as simple as saying something different in the moment and feeling like you stood up for yourself when in reality you didn't. These moments feel important to us. Sometimes they can feel like turning points in our lives where things can and did go wrong.
Part of us wants to believe that these moments define our lives. They make us who we are which isn't who we wanted to be. We wish that our lives had turned out differently, which we think of as inherently better. It's hard not to obsess over what could've been. But part of the reason we think that is because we didn't make those other decisions. We made the ones we did. If we made different choices, we might think that the ones we did in fact make were the wrong ones. So you don't ever really have a way to get out of it. In large part because we can't go back and change our decisions. We can't actually see how making other choices would affect us.
Which leaves us with only really two options, either continue to think about what happened in the past or to let it go. Actually doing this is much harder than it seems. Our past is always with us. Every moment that passes is another chance to look back and think about the choice you made. It can feel easier to just live in the past and think endlessly about how your life went wrong. There's a comfortable feeling in thinking back. After all, you can't change it so you don't have to worry about what's happening now or how your current choices affected you. But is that actually better?
Previously in this space, we've looked at concepts of regret and the way in which it's important to try and make up for past decisions. How people can look back on their lives when they've done terrible things. Wanting to do something that makes either us or the people around us feel better. These are all worthy goals but there are some things you can't make up for. It doesn't have to be the kind of thing where you actually killed or hurt someone physically. Maybe it was just a relationship that ended because you didn't make the right decision. Where does that leave you though? With endless regrets and serving other people's needs more than your own. Or it can if you don't let go of these painful events and move forward. How do you do that? What happens when you wake up and you know that your life has gone wrong?
“You know that friend you have? The girl who seems to have it all figured out? She's got the great job, the great guy, the great life... well, I'm not that girl. My name is Erica Strange, I'm 32, still working a dead end job, still sleeping with my cats. I know people wonder why the cute girl with the great education and the great friends can't get it together. There's a simple answer... bad decisions. I could teach a course on messing up your life, really I am that good at getting everything wrong. The worst part is it wasn't always like this. I used to be a rising star but these days? I just feel like a flame out.”
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