Undo The Past Quotes

You will notice that what we are aiming at when we fall in love is a very strange paradox. The paradox consists of the fact that, when we fall in love, we are seeking to re-find all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these early parents or siblings inflicted upon us. So that love contains in it the contradiction: The attempt to return to the past and the attempt to undo the past.

Afraid to Love I turn away and close my heart— to the promise of love that is luring. For the past has taught to not be caught, in what is not worth pursuing— To never do the things I've done that once had led to my undoing.

I can’t undo the past. But in the future, I will gladly lay my life down for you, brother. (Styxx)

You cannot undo the past; you can only learn to live with it, find some way of making peace with it, and move on.

Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing.

You can’t heal a heart that’s been fragmented. But my wounds were closing. Stitch by stitch, I was starting to feel again. I can’t undo the past and stop everything that has happened. However, I can try to take a tiny step forward.

He couldn’t undo the past, nor could he know how he had already altered the future. But that didn’t matter. What he really cared about was captured in the warmth of their interlaced fingers. What mattered was the life the two of them made together now.

So she should not wish to undo the past but learn to accept its consequences, and remember that not all consequences were evil.

A thousand regrets I’ve had in love, A thousand times I’ve longed to change the past. I know, my love, there is no going back. No undoing of our thousand burdens. We must go on despite our heavy hearts. A thousand regrets I’ve had in love, but I shall never regret you.

Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.

Would you trade him in order to undo the past?" That's a question I can't answer.

The truth is that I did feel bad before, but now my patience is at a thread. It's not as if I can go back and undo the past.

who did I think we were. who did I think I could make you. this is the oldest mistake, to confuse wanting with magic. silence is the undoing of every spell, and we are experts in the unsaid. even now, I forget to put us in past tense. as if the air in this city were the same. as if love is anything like its speaking.

I’ve been trying to construct a memory that would let me undo the past, that would amplify it and destroy it, so that the more I remember and the more I lose myself in the images that remain, the less they have to do with me.

Money and beauty are defenses against the sorrows of this world but neither can undo the past. Only time will conquer time. The way forward is the only way back to innocence and to peace.

It’s interesting-most people think about therapy as something that involves going in and undoing what’s happened. But whatever your past experiences created in your brain, the associations exist and you can’t just delete them. You can’t get rid of the past. Therapy is more about building new associations, making new, healthier default pathways. It is almost as if therapy is taking your two-lane dirt road and building a four-lane freeway alongside it. The old road stays, but you don’t use it much anymore. Therapy is building a better alternative, a new default. And that takes repetition, and time, honestly, it works best if someone understands how the brain changes. This is why understanding how trauma impacts our health is essential for everyone.

Even if you are what your parents made you, if you stay that way, it’s your own darn fault. We’re not going to undo the past. Let’s focus on making the necessary changes to improve your functioning.

The past has taught to not be caught in what is not worth pursuing- To never do the things I've done that once had led to my undoing

The promises of the future cannot undo the harm of the past.

I don't have a lot of regrets about the way I've lived my life. Not because I haven't made mistakes - I've made plenty. But what's the point of regret? You can't undo the past.

If I could undo my past for you, McKenzie, I would. But I don’t have that power. No fae does.

He who sees the past as surprise free is bound to have a future full of surprises.

And even though quick hookups were all I'd ever been capable of, I would've given her more if she had wanted that. I would've given her everything if she had asked. It would probably never be enough, and I knew I couldn't undo everything I had done in the past. I couldn't go back and change the fact that I'd been with all those girls, that Syd had seen me take home one girl after another, but damn, if she had asked, I would've told her that my feelings for her ran deep.

My dad says stop thinking that way. “You be lookin’ backward all the time, Brady, you’re gonna have one heck of a crook in the neck.” He smiles when he says that. But I know what he means deep down, and it’s not funny. You can’t keep dwelling on the past when you can’t undo it. You can’t make it happen any different than it did.

We don't go back to wallow, we go back to undo the lies that are back there that are holding its captive from living a wondrous and full life.

Nothing you do now can undo what’s been done. You can’t change the past.

This only is denied to God: the power to undo the past.

You can't undo the past, but you can learn from it.

   If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home. The risks are high. The voltage crackling. —Anne Roiphe, Married

Mademoiselle, I speak as a friend. Bury your dead! ... Give up the past! Turn to the future! What is done is done. Bitterness will not undo it.' 'I'm sure that would suit dear Linnet admirably.' Poirot made a gesture. 'I am not thinking of her at this moment! I am thinking of you. You have suffered - yes - but what you are doing now will only prolong the suffering.

You can’t undo the past, but you can remedy it by creating a better future.

You can’t undo the past. You can only go forward and make things better in the future.

When you're born, your life (past Karma) is like a piece of string with knots in it and you've got to try, before you die, to undo all the knots: but you tie another twenty trying to get one undone.

He who sees the past as surprise-free is bound to have a future full of surprises.

An unknown place in some distant land can’t undo the tragedies of the past. If it could, we’d all be travelers, spending our natural lives on steamer ships and trains.

Dear girl, face whatever it is. You’ve been brave already. You’ve come here on your own. Only a brave soul would do that. Be brave again. Be brave until the end. You can’t go back and undo this. It’s one of the harsh realities of this life. If I could I’d go back and unsay every harsh word I’ve ever uttered. But I can’t—and you can’t change the past either. Look ahead.

For those filled with regret, perhaps the most needful exercise of proactivity is to realize that past mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can’t recall them, we can’t undo them, we can’t control the consequences that came as a result.

I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of the peculiar innocence and confidence, which will never come again, which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached—it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

There’s nothing wrong with being broken. Some things aren’t meant to be whole. And some things don’t need to be fixed. Some things are broken and aren’t meant to be fixed. But that doesn’t mean they’re fine the way they are. It just means they are the way they are. There’s no changing them or undoing the past. There’s no gluing the pieces back together and remaking the whole how it once was. There’s just sorting through the shards and making something new out of them. That’s all you can do.

A genuine apology focuses on the feelings of the other rather than on how the one who is apologizing is going to benefit in the end. It seeks to acknowledge full responsibility for an act, and does not use self-serving language to justify the behavior of the person asking forgiveness. A sincere apology does not seek to erase what was done. No amount of words can undo past wrongs. Nothing can ever reverse injustices committed against others. But an apology pronounced in the context of horrible acts has the potential for transformation. It clears or ‘settles’ the air in order to begin reconstructing the broken connections between two human beings.

Have only this consolation--that he was never a fiend or even truly a madman, but only an eager, studious, and curious boy whose love of mystery and of the past was his undoing. He stumbled on things no mortal ought ever to know, and reached back through the years as no one ever should reach; and something came out of those years to engulf him.

You can't undo the past, but you can learn from it. ... I believe in you, Charlie. I believe that you can be a man God designed you to be. A man of honor and integrity. You've got a good heart. ... It's just a little rusty, is all. Give it a good scrubbing, scrape away the corrosion, and infuse it with a purpose higher than itself. It will shine again.

No accumulation of good, no matter how vast, undoes an evil; no rescue of the future, no matter how successful, undoes a murder in the past.

The ability to change our past would be an endless quest to undo new mistakes.

First exhaustion, then shame, then callous cynicism. Then collapse. But I'm not there yet, I'm not past cynicism. I still want to help.

We can no more master the past than we can undo it. But we can reconcile ourselves to it. The form for this is the lament, which arises out of all recollection.

You can't undo the past

You cannot undo the past but wishing it undone.

I belong to a nation which for the past four years has begun to relive the course of her entire history and which is calmly and surely preparing out of the ruins to make another history…Your nation, on the other hand, has received from its sons only the love it deserved, which was blind. A nation is not justified by such love. That will be your undoing. And you who were already conquered in your greatest victories, what will you be in the approaching defeat?

I thought I'd known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin. I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing. A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It's not as though she hadn't promised to be my ruin, hadn't already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me. I watch Paedyn through the gaps of a gawking crowd, just as I will for the rest of my life. I'll be forced to spend my days at her service but never at her side. In her shadow but never truly seen. In love with a girl I'd have bowed to long before she became my queen.

What people remember about the past, they suggested, is likely to warp their judgment of the future. “We often decide that an outcome is extremely unlikely or impossible, because we are unable to imagine any chain of events that could cause it to occur. The defect, often, is in our imagination.”¶ The

You don’t understand –” “Like hell I don’t!” Mitch said, slamming his beer glass onto the table. “Who do you think you are? You don’t think I know? Hell, Taylor, I probably know you better than you know yourself. You think you’re the only one with a shitty past? You think you’re the only one who’s always trying to change it? I have news for you. Everyone has crap in their background, everyone has things they wish they could undo. But most people don’t go around doing their best to screw up their present lives because of it.

You can’t take away the past; you can only add to the narrative. There is a narrative about Muslims that already exists. I’m not here to undo or rewrite history. That is propaganda or an impossibility. What I, and others, can do is expand on the notion of what it means to be Muslim, continue the story line that survives alongside us.

One of the most significant patterns established by those who were emotionally abused in childhood is based on what is called the “repetition compulsion”—an unconscious drive to repeat the same type of abusive relationship we ourselves experienced as a child in an attempt to accomplish a new outcome. The repetition compulsion compels us to transfer our longings, conflicts, and defenses from the past onto the present in an attempt to undo the past.

Ten things that won’t make you happier Wanting to be someone you aren’t. Wishing you could undo a past that can’t be undone. Taking out your hurt on people who didn’t cause your hurt. Trying to distract yourself from pain by doing something that creates more pain. Being unable to forgive yourself. Waiting for people to understand you when they don’t even understand themselves. Imagining happiness is the place you reach when you get everything done. Trying to control things in a universe characterized by unpredictability. Avoiding painful memories by resisting a contented present. The belief that you have to be happy.

Man, who has not been granted the gift of undoing, who is always an un-consulted heir of other men’s deeds, and who is always burdened with a responsibility that appears to be the consequence of an unending chain of events rather than conscious acts, demands an explanation and interpretation of the past in which the mysterious key to his future destiny seems to be concealed.

It's not that your mother didn't love you,' the boy named Crow says from behind me. 'She loved you very deeply. The first thing you have to do is believe that. That's your starting point.' 'But she abandoned me. She disappeared, leaving me alone where I shouldn't be. I'm finally beginning to understand how much that hurt. How could she do it if she really loved me?' 'That's the reality of it. It did happen,'the boy named Crow says. 'You were hurt badly, and those scars will be with you forever. I feel sorry for you, I really do. But think of it like this: It's not too late to recover. You're young, you're tough. You're adaptable. You can patch up your wounds, lift your head, and move on. But for her that's not an option. The only thing she'll ever be is lost. It doesn't matter whether somebody judges this as good or bad- that's not the point. You're the one who has the advantage. You ought to consider that.' I don't respond. 'It all really happened, you can't undo it,' Crow tells me. 'She shouldn't have abandoned you then, and you shouldn't have been abandoned. But things in the past are like a plate that's shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?' I nod. You can never put it back together like it was. He's hit the nail on the head. The boy named Crow continues. 'Your mother felt a gut-wrenching kind of fear and anger inside her, okay? Just like you do now. Which is why she had to abandon you.' 'Even though she loved me?' 'Even though she loved you, she had to abandon you. You need to understand how she felt then, and learn to accept it. Understand the overpowering fear and anger she experienced, and feel it as your own- so you won't inherit it and repeat it. The main thing is this: You have to forgive her. That's not going to be easy, I know, but you have to do it. That's the only way you can be saved. There's no other way!' - pg 398-99

River: There’s nothing wrong with being broken. Some things aren’t meant to be whole. And some things don’t need to be fixed. Priest: Some things are broken and aren’t meant to be fixed. But that doesn’t mean they’re fine the way they are. It just means they are the way they are. There’s no changing them or undoing the past. There’s no gluing the pieces back together and remaking the whole how it once was. There’s just sorting through the shards and making something new out of them. That’s all you can do.

There are none who can undo the past. But there is one who will carry the pain of it. He knows too well the sting of injustice. No, more than that. The blood of it. But with it, He bears the scars of his own injustice with the same hands that carry me now (p. 182).

It is in the nature of things to be lost and not otherwise. Think of how little has been salvaged from the compost of time of the hundreds of billions of dreams dreamt since the language to describe them emerged, how few names, how few wishes, how few languages even, how we don’t know what tongues the people who erected the standing stones of Britain and Ireland spoke or what the stones meant, don’t know much of the language of the Gabrielanos of Los Angeles or the Miwoks of Marin, don’t know how or why they drew the giant pictures on the desert floor in Nazca, Peru, don’t know much even about Shakespeare or Li Po. It is as though we make the exception the rule, believe that we should have rather than that we will generally lose. We should be able to find our way back again by the objects we dropped, like Hansel and Gretel in the forest, the objects reeling us back in time, undoing each loss, a road back from lost eyeglasses to lost toys and baby teeth. Instead, most of the objects form the secret constellations of our irrecoverable past, returning only in dreams where nothing but the dreamer is lost. They must still exist somewhere: pocket knives and plastic horses don’t exactly compost, but who knows where they go in the great drifts of objects sifting through our world?

Why can’t you just get over it? It’s all in the past.’ These two statements often run together. Apparently, history is not there to be learned from, rather it’s a large boulder to be gotten over. It’s fascinating, because in the hundreds of workshops I’ve taught on Shakespeare no one has ever told me to get over his writing because it’s, you know, from the, erm, past. I’m still waiting for people to get over Plato, or Da Vinci or Bertrand Russell, or indeed the entirety of recorded history, but it seems they just won’t. It is especially odd in a nation where much of the population is apparently proud of Britain’s empire that critics of one of its most obvious legacies should be asked to get over it, the very same thing from the past that they are proud of. But anyway, let’s imagine for a second that humanity did indeed ‘get over’ - which in this case means forget - the past. Well, we’d have to learn to walk and talk and cook and hunt and plant crops all over again, we’d have to undo all of human invention and start from . . . when? What period exactly is it we are allowed to start our memory from? Those that tell us to get over the past never seem to specify, but I’m eager to learn. In reality, of course, they just don’t want to have any conversations that they find uncomfortable.

I thought I'd known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin. I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing. A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It's not as though she hadn't promised to be my ruin, hadn't already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me. I watch Paedyn through the gaps of a gawking crowd, just as I will for the rest of my life. I'll be forced to spend my days at her service but never at her side. In her shadow but never truly seen. In love with a girl I'd have bowed to long before she became my queen.

But that doesn’t mean they’re fine how they are,” I continue. “It just means they are how they are. There’s no changing them or undoing the past. There’s no gluing the pieces back together and remaking the whole how it once was. There’s just sorting through the shards and making something new out of them. That’s all you can do.

thought I’d known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin. I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is infinite. It is my undoing. A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It’s not as though she hadn’t promised to be my ruin, hadn’t already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me.

Maybe it was time to undo the locks and open all the windows. Maybe falling in love didn’t mean you were doomed and the future couldn’t be determined by the past. Maybe I had to stop living my life through books and it was time to rip off all the caution tape and see what happened when I let myself feel. Or when I let myself fall.

But past who can recall, or don undoe? Not God Omnipotent, nor Fate

Only with steadfast memories can we now be strong so as to undo the mistakes of the past, to begin anew and build from the rubble of their betrayal...

I can go and do it now, but I can never go an undo it later.

The idea of using current distortions to re-create the past was part of an old, now abandoned, vision of the therapist as archaeologist, patiently scraping off the dust of decades to understand (and thus, in some mysterious manner, undo) the original trauma. It is a far better model to think of understanding the past in order to apprehend the present therapist-patient relationship.

There is an advantage, the research shows us, in being op­timistic. People who cope well tend to have an indelible belief that things will somehow turn out OK. They also tend to be confident. They believe that they will be able to exert at least some control over the outcome of even the most difficult life events. This is not to say that optimistic people believe they can undo the past or stop certain things from happening. Sometimes, even the hardiest of individuals are initially stunned after a tragedy. Nonetheless, fueled by their deep-rooted sense that they can and should be able to move on, they manage to gather their strength, regroup, and work toward restoring the balance in their lives. Along with these optimistic, self-confident beliefs, people who cope well also have a broader repertoire of behaviors. Simply put, they seem to have more tools in their toolboxes. One example is how resilient people express emotion. We think that, as a general rule, the more we show what we are feeling, the better off we will be. This is especially true when bad things happen to us, and it is actually a cornerstone of the traditional grief work idea.

I felt lost without the Delete key, the scrollbar, the cut and paste functions, the Undo command. I had to do all my editing on-screen. In using the word processor, I had become something of a word processor myself.

A miracle is a beginning and an ending. 2It thus abolishes time. 3It is always an affirmation of rebirth, which seems to go back but really goes forward. 4It undoes the past in the present, and thus releases the future.

Sometimes I forget for one second and it hurts. It’s a different kind of pain than the constant, the weight that hangs from my heart. It swings from twine embedded so deeply that my aorta has grown around it. Blood pulses past rope in the chambers of my heart, dragging away tiny fibers until my whole body is suffused and pain is all I am and ever can be. But sometimes it swings just right and there's a moment of suspension when I can't feel it. The rope goes slack and the laws of physics give me one second of relief. I can laugh and smile and feel something else. But, those same laws undo me. And, when it swings back, there's a sharp tug on my heart to remind me that I forgot.

I am suggesting a seismic shift in black politics. Obviously, we can’t stand idly by as Democrats take our votes for granted and cave to forces that devastate our communities. Nor can extremists on the right and those who enable them expect us to sit back as they trade in racist nonsense, continue to legislate for the 1 percent, and undo the modest gains we’ve made in this country. What has become crystal clear over these past few years, at least to me, is that business as usual isn’t sufficient; that the typical black characters on the national scene have to be called out for what they have failed to do and say in the face of what has happened and is happening in black America.

Simply because something has been reformed, does not mean it is now acceptable. And even if something is now better, that does not undo its past, nor does it eliminate the necessity of speaking about how that past may have shaped the present.

Guilt is not merely a concern with the past; it is a present-moment immobilization about a past event. And the degree of immobilization can run from mild upset to severe depression. If you are simply learning from your past, and vowing to avoid the repetition of some specific behavior, this is not guilt. You experience guilt only when you are prevented from taking action now as a result of having behaved in a certain way previously. Learning from your mistakes is healthy and a necessary part of growth. Guilt is unhealthy because you are ineffectively using up your energy in the present feeling hurt, upset and depressed about a historical happening. And it’s futile as well as unhealthy. No amount of guilt can ever undo anything.

Three things happen when you apologize sincerely. First, you acknowledge someone’s anger or sadness. You validate that they have reason to be angry or that their anger is real. This often disarms them. Research shows that, after the apology, they no longer see you as a threat or as someone who might again harm them. They drop their defensive posture. And finally, when you’re successful, their brain prepares to forgive. They may even be able to move on from the source of injury entirely. Beverly Engel, a psychotherapist who specializes in trauma recovery, writes in her book The Power of Apology, “While an apology cannot undo harmful past actions, if done sincerely and effectively, it can undo the negative effects of those actions.

I realized that, though I was on Earth, I had been living this past year as I had always lived. I was just thinking I could carry on, moving forward. But I was not me anymore. I was a human, give or take. And humans were about change. That is how they survived, by doing and undoing and doing again.

Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an achievement that much of the Republican Party has been trying to undo over the past several decades. Richard Nixon signed into law four landmark federal bills: the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Environmental Pesticide Control Act, and the Endangered Species Act. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, and made many strong environmental appointments in his administration. As we saw in Section 2.2, it was when the Reagan administration came to power in 1980 that environmental concern began to become a partisan issue.

My point is, or should be, simple: history happened. The object is not to undo it, distort it, or to make it fit our present political attitudes. The object of history, which each generation properly interprets anew, is to understand what happened and why. A multicultural Canada can and should look at its past with fresh eyes. It should, for example, study how the Ukrainians came to Canada, how they were treated, how they lived, sometimes suffered, ultimately prospered, and became Canadians. What historians should not do is to recreate history to make it serve present purposes. They should not obscure or reshape events to make them fit political agendas. They should not declare whole areas of the past off-limits because they can only be presented in politically unfashionable terms any more than they should fail to draw object lessons from a past that was frequently less than pleasant and less than honourable. Because the past was not perfect, it must not be made perfect today.

Scylla was not born a monster. I made her.” His face was in the fire’s shadows. “How did it happen?” There was a piece of me that shouted its alarm: if you speak he will turn gray and hate you. But I pushed past it. If he turned gray, then he did. I would not go on anymore weaving my cloths by day and unraveling them again at night, making nothing. I told him the whole tale of it, each jealousy and folly and all the lives that had been lost because of me. “Her name,” he said. “Scylla. It means the Render. Perhaps it was always her destiny to be a monster, and you were only the instrument.” “Do you use the same excuse for the maids you hanged?” It was as if I had struck him. “I make no excuse for that. I will wear that shame all my life. I cannot undo it, but I will spend my days wishing I could.” “It is how you know you are different from your father,” I said. “Yes.” His voice was sharp. “It is the same for me,” I said. “Do not try to take my regret from me.” He was quiet a long time. “You are wise,” he said. “If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.” “Yet at least what you loved, you fought for.” “That is not always a blessing. I must tell you, all my past is like today, monsters and horrors no one wants to hear.” He held my gaze. Something about him then reminded me strangely of Trygon. An unearthly, quiet patience. “I want to hear,” he said.

To give up a marriage - someone unmarried might imagine it's like giving up a seat in a theater, or sacrificing a trick in bridge for the possibility of better, later. But it is harsher than anyone could realize: a hot invisible fire, burning pieces of hope and fantasy, and charred bits of the past. It had to go, however, if something were to be built in its place. So I stood there and gave Buzz advice, and all I could think of were the automatons we had seen at Playland, moving beautifully in the wind, and the children who were taken behind the scenes on a tour and shown, to their surprise, the vast tangle of wires and switches that would be so hard to undo, and even worse, once undone, to bring to life again.

Let it go. You have your own life. Not Uncle Saul’s, not your parents’.’ His face had grown very serious then, his eyes searching. ‘You can’t live in the past and you certainly can’t undo it. What happened to Uncle Saul has nothing to do with you. Memories can kill, Yvette. The past can reach right up and grab you and drag you to a place you shouldn’t be. Like a burning building.

I think that he thinks that me being beautiful will absorb the brunt of his repeated rejections but all it’s done is show me that beauty is worth nothing in the end.” She moves past me back into my room, over to my bedside table, and finishes her tequila from before. Downs it. She doesn’t like spirits. Hates them, actually. And you know what—fuck it, I hate him. I didn’t before, but I hate him now.

DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF. I can bring good even out of your mistakes. Your finite mind tends to look backward, longing to undo decisions you have come to regret. This is a waste of time and energy, leading only to frustration. Instead of floundering in the past, release your mistakes to Me. Look to Me in trust, anticipating that My infinite creativity can weave both good choices and bad into a lovely design. Because you are human, you will continue to make mistakes. Thinking that you should live an error-free life is symptomatic of pride. Your failures can be a source of blessing, humbling you and giving you empathy for other people in their weaknesses. Best of all, failure highlights your dependence on Me. I am able to bring beauty out of the morass of your mistakes. Trust Me, and watch to see what I will do.

Stories people told themselves were biased by the availability of the material used to construct them...what people remember about the past, [Kahneman and Tversky] suggested, is likely to warp their judgement of the future. "We often decide that an outcome is extremely unlikely or impossible, because we are unable to imagine any chain of events that could cause it to occur. The defect, often, is in our imagination.

When a man has fury in his bones he can do wild things, some of them fiercer than what he is, and sometimes afterward he wakes to what he has done, and if the waking is graceful he can make it right with his atonement. But when a man has crossed past fury, silently and without his knowing, so that somewhere in the night he crosses over into the cold and shimmering country of indifference, the barren country where he looks up into the stars and knows only the cold fire of continuance, the pith of wintering in things, then he has come to a place where he himself is the wild thing that will undo him, and he is no more himself than the snow that will cover him in oblivion, and he blows through the land and his own bones like the snow itself, and wherever he drifts he is banished, and wherever he arrives he will never return, and wherever he travels, he is never there.

I was thinking, no doubt, of our nights in bed, of peculiar innocence and confidence which will never come again which had made those nights so delightful, so unrelated to past, present, or anything to come, so unrelated, finally, to my life since it was not necessary for me to take any but the most mechanical responsibility for them. And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no-one to watch, no penalties attached -- it was this last fact which our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

We all do it. Replay the horrific moments of our lives and reimagine them by going left instead of right, being this person instead of that person, making different choices. You don’t have to be locked up to occupy your mind and your days trying to rewrite a painful past or undo a terrible tragedy or make right a terrible wrong. But pain and injustice happen- they happen to us all. I’d like to believe it’s what you choose to do after such an experience that matters the most- that truly changes your life forever. I’d really like to believe that.

Life is too short to be in any situation you don’t want to be in, and it feels even shorter when you’re with people you don’t want to be around. There aren’t any erasers to undo our past, but there are fresh pages to write a new chapter. I have great friends who mustered up the courage and strength to escape their comfort zones and place themselves in situations they would much rather be in. It took time and it was a struggle, but they came out as better people with better lives. You can do the same thing. It won’t be easy, but so what? Is there really a point to building a life if it isn’t the life you want? I strongly encourage you to take risks; you’re worth it.

When I return to the loft, my dear brother has Darling pressed to the trunk of the Never Tree. She’s trembling beneath him, occupied by his lips. So when I snatch her wrist and double loop the rope around her, it catches her off guard. A cute little breath hiccups past her lips. I am an experienced knotter and I have both arms tied to the tree in less than thirty seconds. Kas and I step back to admire my handy work. I’ve used a single column tie on both her wrists and lashed her to low hanging branches of the Never Tree. They are good, basic knots. Easy to undo. Hard to get out of. “Look at our Darling,” I tell my brother. “Trussed up like the naughty little girl she is.

Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for what happened. For the mistakes you made. For your poor choices. For not showing up the way you needed to. For being the person you wanted to be. You're human. You did the best you could in the moment given what you knew and what you had, and that's all you can ask for yourself. You're still learning. You're still finding your way. That takes time. And you're allowed to give yourself that time. You're allowed to show up in the world imperfectly. You're allowed to fail at things you tried hard for. You're allowed to realize you made the wrong decision. You're allowed to be someone who's still figuring out their path and their purpose. You're allowed to forgive yourself. You can't go back and change the decisions you've made, but you can choose what you do today. You can keep choosing, again and again. You can start over. And that's where your power is--in today. So no more beating yourself up. No more going over and over it again in your head and torturing yourself with the past. What happened is over, and all the shame and self-hatred in the world won't undo that. Today, you're starting over. Today, you're moving forward with the new knowledge and experiences you have. Today, you can be the person you want to be and live the life you want to live. You're not a bad person. You're not a disappointment or a failure.

The Drunken Fisherman" Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye (Truly Jehovah's bow suspends No pots of gold to weight its ends); Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout Rose to my bait. They flopped about My canvas creel until the moth Corrupted its unstable cloth. A calendar to tell the day; A handkerchief to wave away The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm Pouching a bottle in one arm; A whiskey bottle full of worms; And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms To mete the worm whose molten rage Boils in the belly of old age? Once fishing was a rabbit's foot-- O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot, Let suns stay in or suns step out: Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout-- The fisher's fluent and obscene Catches kept his conscience clean. Children, the raging memory drools Over the glory of past pools. Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls Its bloody waters into holes; A grain of sand inside my shoe Mimics the moon that might undo Man and Creation too; remorse, Stinking, has puddled up its source; Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage. This is the pot-hole of old age. Is there no way to cast my hook Out of this dynamited brook? The Fisher's sons must cast about When shallow waters peter out. I will catch Christ with a greased worm, And when the Prince of Darkness stalks My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . . On water the Man-Fisher walks.

Legends have always played a powerful role in the making of history. Man, who has not been granted the gift of undoing, who is always an un-consulted heir of other men’s deeds, and who is always burdened with a responsibility that appears to be the consequence of an unending chain of events rather than conscious acts, demands an explanation and interpretation of the past in which the mysterious key to his future destiny seems to be concealed. Legends were the spiritual foundations of every ancient city, empire, people, promising safe guidance through the limitless spaces of the future. Without ever relating facts reliably, yet always expressing their true significance, they offered a truth beyond realities, a remembrance beyond memories.

And yet, what finally cemented our friendship from the very start was our love of France and of the French language, or, better yet, of the idea of France - because real France we no longer had much use for, nor it for us. We nursed this love like a guilty secret, because we couldn't undo it, didn't trust it, didn't even want to dignify it with the name of love. But it hovered over our lives like a fraught and tired heirloom that dated back to our respective childhoods in colonial North Africa. Perhaps it wasn't even France, or the romance of France we loved; perhaps France was the nickname we gave our desperate reach for something firm in our lives - and for both of us the past was the firmest thing we had to hold on to, and the past in both cases was written in French.

IT’S A CHOICE Try as we might; neither I nor anyone else can change the past. Yet, our history does not have to hold us hostage. We can’t change things said and done to us, nor can we undo and change what we have done to others. There is no do-over, unfortunately. What we can choose to do, however, is grow and take ownership of our mistakes and share our history and experiences to heal ourselves and others. We can also choose to forgive ourselves and others, and we can also choose to use our experiences to raise ourselves while giving hope and inspiration to others. We can choose to grow from adversity, and we can choose to let go of victimhood. And that is what I decided to do when I left prison, here and in my book. I choose to own it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I choose to let it all go and use my story as both a cautionary tale and a source of inspiration.

Legendary explanations of history always served as belated corrections of facts and real events, which were needed precisely because history itself would hold man responsible for deeds he had not done and for consequences he had never foreseen. The truth of the ancient legends—what gives them their fascinating actuality many centuries after the cities and empires and peoples they served have crumbled to dust—was nothing but the form in which past events were made to fit the human condition in general and political aspirations in particular. Only in the frankly invented tale about events did man consent to assume his responsibility for them, and to consider past events his past. Legends made him master of what he had not done, and capable of dealing with what he could not undo. In this sense, legends are not only among the first memories of mankind, but actually the true beginning of human history.

I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge? I am supposed to love Nick despite all his shortcomings. And Nick is supposed to love me despite my quirks. But clearly, neither of us does. It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous. You can read more about my thoughts on love in Amazing. Out soon! But first: motherhood. The due date is tomorrow. Tomorrow happens to be our anniversary. Year six. Iron. I thought about giving Nick a nice pair of handcuffs, but he may not find that funny yet. It's so strange to think: A year ago today, I was undoing my husband. Now I am almost done reassembling him. Nick has spent all his free time these past months slathering my belly with cocoa butter and running out for pickles and rubbing my feet, and all the things good fathers-to-be are supposed to do. Doting on me. He is learning to love me unconditionally, under all my conditions. I think we are finally on our way to happiness. I have finally figured it out. We are on the eve of becoming the world's best, brightest nuclear family. We just need to sustain it. Nick doesn't have it down perfect. This morning he was stroking my hair and asking what else he could do for me, and I said: 'My gosh, Nick, why are you so wonderful to me?' He was supposed to say: You deserve it. I love you. But he said, 'Because I feel sorry for you.' 'Why?' 'Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.' I really, truly wish he hadn't said that. I keep thinking about it. I can't stop. I don't have anything else to add. I just wanted to make sure I had the last word. I think I've earned that.

St Isaac urges, God's taking of our humanity is to be understood not only as an act of restoration, not only as a response to man's sin, but also and more fundamentally as an act of love, an expression of God's own nature. Even had there been no fall, God in his own limitless, outgoing love would still have chosen to identify himself with his creation by becoming man. The Incarnation of Christ, looked at in this way, effects more than a reversal of the fall, more than a restoration of man to his original state in Paradise. When God becomes man, this marks the beginning of an essentially new stage in the history of man, and not just a return to the past. The Incarnation raises man to a new level; the last state is higher than the first. Only in Jesus Christ do we see revealed the full possibilities of our human nature; until he is born, the true implications of our personhood are still hidden from us. Christ's birth, as St Basil puts it, is “the birthday of the whole human race”;4 Christ is the first perfect man—perfect, that is to say, not just in a potential sense, as Adam was in his innocence before the fall, but in the sense of the completely realized “likeness”. The Incarnation, then, is not simply a way of undoing the effects of original sin, but it is an essential stage upon man's journey from the divine image to the divine likeness. The true image and likeness of God is Christ himself; and so, from the very first moment of man's creation in the image, the Incarnation of Christ was in some way already implied. The true reason for the Incarnation, then, lies not in man's sinfulness but in his unfallen nature as a being made in the divine image and capable of union with God.

When we feel frustrated, our first inclination is to change whatever isn't working for us. We can try to accomplish this by making demands on others, attempting to alter our own behavior, or by a variety of other means. Having moved us to action, frustration will have done its duty. The problem is that life brings many frustrations that are beyond us: we cannot alter time or change the past or undo what we have done. We cannot avoid death, make good experiences last, cheat on reality, make something work that won't, or induce someone to cooperate with us when they may not feel like it. We are unable to always make things fair or to guarantee our own or another's safety. Of all these unavoidable frustrations the most threatening for children is that they cannot make themselves psychologically and emotionally secure. These extremely important needs — to be wanted, invited, liked, loved, and special — are out of their control. As long as we parents are successful in holding on to our children, they need not be confronted with this deep futility, fundamental to human existence. It is not that we can forever protect them from reality, but children should not have to face challenges they are not ready for. Peer-oriented children are not so lucky. Given the degree of frustration they experience, they become desperate to change things, to somehow secure their attachments. Some become compulsively demanding in their relationships with one another. Some become preoccupied with making themselves more attractive in the eyes of their peers — hence the large increase in the demand for cosmetic surgery among young people and hence, too, their obsession with being fashionably chic at earlier and earlier ages. Some become bossy, others charmers or entertainers. Some bend over backward, turning into psychological pretzels to preserve a sense of closeness with their peers. Perpetually dissatisfied, these children are out of touch with the source of their discontent and rail against a reality they have no control over. Of course, the same dynamics may also occur in children's relationships with adults — and all too often do — but they are absolutely guaranteed to be present in peer-oriented relationships. No matter how much the peer-oriented child attempts to change things by making demands, altering her appearance, making things work for others; no matter how she tones down her true personality or compromises herself, she will find only fleeting relief. She'll find no lasting relief from the unrelenting attachment frustration, and there will be the added frustration of continually hitting against this wall of impossibility. Her frustration, rather than coming to an end, moves one step closer to being transformed into aggression.