Why You Need to Face Your Past
1 min read

Why You Need to Face Your Past

“In the quest for plenty, know the paths are many
But few will lead you past the regions where the past is buried.”
–Zack Hemsey[1]

If you don’t confront your past, certain paths through life will remain locked forever.

On one side confronting your past is uncomfortable, painful, and scary. These are immediate consequences of confronting something you’ve avoided for a long time. Small things you ignored will grow. They can grow so big that you no longer have the courage to face them. But because you have vital things to learn from your past, not confronting it will lock certain paths through life.

To unlock these paths you need to face your past. But, because of the immediate consequences of doing this, you try to ignore it. Of course, this doesn’t work. Your conscience won’t let you ignore your past. Old memories will frequently appear in your thoughts and remind you that you try to ignore them.

On the other side, confronting your past can liberate you from it. By facing your past you can make peace with your fears, past failure, and bottled-up rage. Instead of letting them fester in a dark corner of your mind you can confront them and learn from them.

You can learn what happened, why it happened, and how you can prevent something similar in the future. This is what reoccurring memories of the past are for: learning how to prevent something similar from happening again.

Once you did that, your past will leave you alone. As a result, new paths open up. Paths that you were afraid of will no longer scare you. Rage and anger will turn into empathy and reoccurring memories will disappear. You will finally find peace.

Try to lock away your past and it will haunt you forever.
Face it and learn from it to unlock new paths through life.


  1. Zack Hemsey, Lessons From a Nomad, Listen. ↩︎

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