Unleash the Monkey Army

Over the last several years I have spent much more time than I'd like working with people who have a hankering for the past. Like a drowning man clinging desperately to a piece of flotsam, they cling to the idea that the past was better. You know what, it might have been. But it's gone. Clinging on to it like an article of faith very rapidly changes it from a spur to restore greatness, to an albatross hanging around our necks. You can't have it back. Every actor in that screenshot has changed. In fact the stage it was played out on has changed too. If not because the stagehands have moved the scenery, then because you will now view it through today's lens made up of knowledge and insight garnered in between times. The trouble is, people tend to spend time dwelling on what they did or didn't do or else view the past through rose-tinted spectacles.And if you're in doubt as to humanity's ability to overlook the bad stuff in our past, look no further th...

In the car this morning I was reflecting on a few conversations I've had of late (so that I could put any actions to one side and clear my mind for the weekend) and it reminded me of something I wrote last year. "The past is a Wagon Wheel" - we swear blind that it was bigger in the past. I'm still comfortable with it as an analogy but I think I missed something in it. While it is true of the good things we reminisce about with fondness, it is also true about the bad things in life. Those mistakes that are not fatal hang around in our mind for years (or can do, I won't assume absolutes). They cast a long shadow. Sometimes it is little more than shade, sometimes it's a cold, dark, sunless valley. I suspect, like the good things in life, the more they are replayed the bigger they seem. We add colour and intensity and more recent things can seem but pale imitations. And these things can be like an invisible hand on the tiller, subtly nudging our heading as w...