Thread by @Jeanvaljean689

Hear me out, what if looking *really carefully* at the past can accomplish more than fantasizing about the future;

I think this year, I am going to focus on new-years RE-solutions, which will entirely be RE-implementing all the solutions I've already used, to make life awesomer.

2/ "I am at the confluence of past and future; melding these streams creatively is what makes life itself feel alive"

... is (I think) a paraphrase of Henri Bergson, of whose work I have not yet read enough...

3/ can't believe that I somehow failed to tag @calhistorian into a tweet thread rethinking the relationship between past and future ...

4/ specifically, @calhistorian, I am wondering:

Can the discipline of history teach us anything specific, about how, if at all, we should craft so-called "New Year's Resolutions"?

5/ another way to put this whole idea, is that dreams actualized, truly, often feel more like dreams REMEMBERED than anything else:

https://twitter.com/JolianaM11/status/1343219881618120704?s=19

6/ my basic thesis, and yes, I have one, is that a carefully grounded review of the past is, in fact, a better predictor, than most kinds of what passes for "prediction" ...

(Thanks, Patricia, for sharing this example!)

https://twitter.com/PHurducas/status/1343199032156581888?s=19

7/ the mistake, is to think that the past is static, and can't be dynamic.

It's not, it's very much alive,

and it changes even while you contemplate it, because it's not even real, it's just the sum of what you remember.

8/ in fact, the way you hold the past in your mind and heart, is nothing more, and nothing less, than your presence in the world at any given moment.

"Beauty is the harvest of presence" - David Whyte

9/ to dwell, not IN the past, but WITH the past, is to be fully present, and hence, fully powerful.

Dreams are possible in this space.

So go forth! And re dream some dreams that are worth re-dreaming

(/fin) (/for now)

10/ ok ... a little postscript, because I want to bring this home with a mundane, concrete, yet totally clear example.

This whole thread was inspired by a brief moment, a few days ago, where I was contemplating some tasks I could get done that afternoon ...

11/ as I was in a reverie of one little thing I COULD do in that moment, I realized that that impulse was shaped by a vivid memory of myself HAVING DONE A SIMILAR THING a few days before...

Thus leading to ->aha moment!

that in fact ALL planning for the future, is just the ...

12/ superposition of a certain kind of imaginative thinking, upon the fluid foundation of memory;

BUT memory is not immutable, it is shaped through the very process of its telling;

In fact, that's more or less the entire premise on which psychotherapy rests.

13/ The direct link between remembering, and shaping the future, never felt quite as vivid, nor as clear.

And maybe that sounds trivially obvious said out loud... yet it seems to unlock so much.

(/end postscript)