Make Peace with Your Past
“Many of us carry heavy emotional baggage from one day to the next without realizing the damaging effect this has not only on the present, but the future…” — Rick Cox
Emotional baggage, which we pick up from damaged or broken relationships, may not seem heavy at first, but the weight will continue to grow unless or until we learn to let go of the hurts in our past. Remember, we can’t change what has already happened, but we can change how we respond as well as what we do about what has happened. When we change how we respond, the present and the future have a better chance of working out to our benefit rather than to our bitter disappointment.
The reason for this lies in the statement:
“Life is TEN percent what happens to YOU and NINETY percent YOUR response.”
When I speak of emotional baggage, I am speaking of those hurts with which we have had to deal in our daily life. We usually find it is not often the big hurts, which have the most adverse effect; it is more frequently an accumulation of the little hurts that wind up being the most damaging in the long run. Usually when it comes to the big hurts we deal with them then move on. On the other hand we seem to hold on to the little ones until one day the weight of these little hurts or emotional baggage is more than we can bear. Unfortunately, this emotional baggage can and does cause us to lose our ability to live a life full of love and happiness.
One type of example of these little hurts is when our parents fight, we take it personally. When our brother or sister wrongs us, we take it personally. When a friend at school puts us down, we take it personally. When our husband or wife wrongs us, we take it personally. These little hurts clog up our personal pipeline through which we give and or receive love. What is really sad is the other party seldom knows they were involved. They have moved on while we carry around this excess baggage. We have this hurt, but because we have not done anything about it, it adds one more little blockage to the pipeline. Eventually, the pipeline is clogged and the back pressure causes a blowup.
It would not seem a big deal if we were to begin to tap one of our fingers with a pencil for a few moments. As a matter of fact, it would not affect our finger at all if only done for a few moments for many of us have done this in nervous or anxious moments. If however, we were to do this for an hour the skin would begin to get red and bruise. If we were to do this for five hours there would be significant swelling along with a blister. By the time this has continued for ten hours the skin would be broken and bleeding; all from a very light tap of the pencil.
You see, these little hurts are like the tapping of the pencil. There is no weight to either of them and therefore, we do not recognize a need to do anything that is until the continual accumulation causes a festering sore, which we can, no longer bear. Eventually, in the same manner the light tapping pencil finally breaks through the surface of the skin, the little hurts clog up our love, light and life pipeline. Notice, it was the accumulation of the light tapping over a long period of time, which eventually broke the skin. The light tapping was only a little bothersome at first, but we put up with it, which means we didn’t do anything about it.
This brings us to another way in which these little hurts occur and that is when we allow others to set our boundaries for us. When we allow others to set our boundaries they eventually push us into corners or places we don’t want to be and thus have us becoming what we don’t want to become. Instead of us telling those who are doing this, what we don’t or do like, we put up with it to keep peace and not cause a stir. The problem is we are not at peace in our hearts. Our hearts are crying out for us to set and establish our own boundaries as to how people should treat us, but rather than make a stink we continue allowing others to push us into their mold.
In the same way we have allowed people to push us into their mold we have allowed little hurts from yesterday, last week, last month, last year or many years ago to accumulate and become something large and in dire need of attention. It is at this point our past begins to affect our present and will for certain affect our future.
The answer is to make peace with our past, which we can do by searching our hearts in the same manner we would search for gold. We are in search of those things that clog the pipeline of love, of light, and of life. Love, light, and life travels into and out of us freely unless the pipeline is clogged. Once clogged, there is no continual flow of these gifts of God. Therefore, it is imperative we find and remove those clogs promptly or better yet, not let them accumulate at all. In so doing, we will have removed that which allows our past to NEGATIVELY AFFECT our present as well as have ensured ourselves a happier and brighter future.
Best of LUCK as you
Labor Under Correct Knowledge…
Respectfully,
Rick Cox