It is not true that one must never look back

During the lockdown in March we tried to convince ourselves that it would be a great lesson for everyone and that we would come out better. We are in December, the end of the Covid-19 chapter is still far away, but that of a year that unfortunately will go down in history is near, so now you can take stock of the past months. It’s time to look back. It is time to realize that we are unable to look back.

As I write, in fact, we are talking about an Italy in the red zone on holidays and pre-holidays, in response to the absurd gatherings of recent days in the shopping streets. At the beginning I thought too that we could have gotten better out of this tragic situation in which we suddenly found ourselves, but seeing how things have gone and how things are going lately, I doubt it more and more. To get better out of something, after all, you need to learn the lesson, and to learn the lesson, you need an effort to become aware and internalize what happened., in such a way that the difficulty becomes an experience to be treasured. Effort that, in the light of the facts, we have not all been able to make. However, I do not think that it is solely our fault if we are bad students in terms of past experiences, if we forget everything so quickly, from one month to the next, because by expanding the reflection beyond the Covid situation, which obviously breeds a itself, in general there is a widespread belief that looking back is useless. «Never look back» on the other hand, right? Never look back, so much “The past is past” and so that’s it, better to leave it alone, better to move on, better to focus on the next goal, since there is always a next goal to focus on, right?

We are always in a great hurry to proceed, to overcome, to leave behind, and in fact, in a situation of normality, enjoying the present is now the challenge of challenges. Perhaps someone paradoxically managed to do it during the lockdown, when stopping was a forced choice and an awareness was inevitable. The fact that it took a global pandemic to give us the opportunity to notice what we have doesn’t seem like a reassuring sign to the well-being society.. The fact is that taken as we are by the idea that we can become happy at a certain point and under certain conditions, instead of being happy at any time and in any way, we move forward, often with autopilot engaged, with the anxiety of arriving first. possible.

The continuous race towards the future is at the same time an escape from the past, to which we tend not to give importance, of which we fail to appreciate the opportunities offered, because for us the opportunities are always where we have not yet been. But no, because what is “behind” is full of opportunities, to be collected rather than grasped, and that is why an extra effort of awareness is needed. This sort of “obligation” to never look back is precisely the mirror of our lifestyle, all focused on achieving ever greater goals, on continuous growth that does not allow for pauses, or, in short, on dissatisfaction.

Looking back, contrary to what is said, is vital to feel satisfied, to notice what you have done, what you have and what you are. To consolidate. In short, “never look back”, he fixes the rear-view mirror, which sometimes requires a nice panoramic look backwards.