“Those Who Dwell on the Past, Those Who Forge the Future” Prologue-3: You Give Meaning to Your Own Life

We tend to think that our lives are determined by past events.
“If only that failure hadn't happened.”
“If only I hadn't met that person.”
“If only I had chosen a different path back then.”
Everyone has had such thoughts cross their mind.

However, is it really the events themselves that cause us pain or provide us with encouragement?
I do not think so.
The reason we are moved is because we ourselves assign meaning to those events.

Even when experiencing the same event, some people find their subsequent lives take very different paths.
One person might view a failure as the “greatest setback of their life” and lose their confidence.
On the other hand, another person might look back on a similar failure and call it “a great lesson in life.”
Even if the events are similar, the lives that follow are vastly different.

What creates that difference is not the event itself, but the meaning we assign to it.
There are countless things in life that do not go as planned.
We may fall ill...
We may part ways with someone dear to us...
We may fail at work...
We cannot live by avoiding these things.

However, we can choose whether to think of that experience as “my life is over” or “a new life begins from here.”
Of course, in the moment, we may not have the capacity to think that way.
In the midst of suffering, we may not be able to find any positive meaning at all.
That is fine.
There is no need to force yourself to find meaning.

When time passes and your heart settles a little, try looking at that event again.
A day may come when you can think, “I am who I am today because of that experience.”
The meaning of life does not exist within events from the very beginning.
It is something we assign to them later on.

That is precisely why the past is not something fixed.
Even if you cannot change the event itself, the meaning that event holds can change little by little as you walk through life.

An experience that was a burden until yesterday might become words that encourage someone else.
A failure you once felt ashamed of might one day be accepted as part of your unique self.
In this way, the past changes from a chain that binds your life into a foundation that supports your future.
We cannot choose our past, nor can we change it.
However, we can choose for ourselves what meaning to give to the past.
That choice is the very first step toward forging the future.