Copyright 2005 Mark Myhre
When I was 5 years old our family moved to Starkville,
Mississippi. My dad had secured a position as a research
scientist at Miss. State Univ. that was simply too good to pass
up.
Starkville was a small town like many other small towns across
America. Life was slow and safe and predictable. All in all, not
such a bad place to live.
For the next 12 years I was a Starkvillian. Like so many other
young boys I spent most of my free time exploring the world from
the comfort of a bicycle seat.
Life was full of adventures. Looking back now, it resembled a
series of Norman Rockwell paintings.
But it wasn’t always so idealistic. In fact, for over 20 years
after leaving that small town I hated everything to do with
Starkville. I called it a nightmare existence in a God-forsaken
town.
So why do you suppose I hated it?
I Focused On The Negative
Like children everywhere, my wonder years consisted of good
events, bad events, and many mediocre and neutral events. Good
times that made me feel good. Bad times that made me feel bad.
And many events stirred little emotional reaction at all.
However, my problem was that I discounted the good events, while
elevating the bad ones.
The painful events on my past became like anchors - the pillars
of the past. The defining moments of my life.
Certain events would happen, and rather than simply feeling the
pain and moving on, I would suppress and repress those painful
emotions.
Paradoxically, while I denied the feelings, I elevated the
events. I would take a painful situation and make it much worse
than it really was.
I Embellished My Past
How do you embellish a painful past? Intentionally exaggerate
its stature and importance. Like a playwright constructing a
play, I would add drama for the effect it created.
I would set the stage. Get the lighting just right. Play
suspenseful music in the background. Create a prologue -
“The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have
been changed to protect the innocent…”
Like one of those old Dragnet TV shows!
I built it up any way I could. I made it sacred.
And no matter what, I could *NOT* feel the feelings of those
past events and let them go! I needed those unresolved emotions
to breathe life into an otherwise-dead past.
I spent way too much of my time giving CPR to a corpse of the
past. Ever given CPR? It’ll wear you out! It’s hard to do it for
very long; it’s just too much work.
Imagine doing it for decades.
I defined my life by those highly selective events of the past
that were being kept alive ONLY by my emotional energy.
I Was Giving My Power To The Past
Thoughts and feelings are the very source of your power. Your
power - your ability and willingness to act - comes about
because of the constant stream of your thoughts and feelings.
Thoughts and feelings are constantly and consistently springing
forth into your consciousness.
A stream of thoughts. A stream of feelings. Together they are
the source of your power.
If you’re using those thoughts and feelings to hold onto the
past, then you’ll have less power available to you now. Power
that could be used to heal your emotions instead becomes
diverted into holding the past in place.
I Built My Past Into A Frankenstein’s Monster
Out of that handful of painful events I created a backbone. From
the backbone I grew a skeleton. Surrounding the skeleton I grew
muscles and skin and internal organs. I gave it a heart. I gave
it a voice.
All that growth required conscious effort on my part. I had to
keep reminding myself of those painful events.
“I really was wronged.”
“I really was shamed.”
“I really was abused.”
Building them up and fleshing them out took a lot of my power.
But it was worth it. I got to feel like a victim. I got to hide
in my self pity. I was entitled. Hey, I EARNED the right to
engage in any errant behavior I chose!
I earned the right to blame, to struggle, to manipulate and
punish anybody I wanted. I earned my righteous arrogance because
of my embellished pain of the past.
I was powerless as a result, but that’s okay. I earned the right
to be weak by all the effort I was expending to try to keep the
past alive.
***
I took the best of me and gave it to a past that didn’t even
exist.
***
It takes constant effort to keep the past alive. You can’t just
set it and forget it - like a thermostat on the wall. You have
to keep remembering it. You have to keep using today’s power to
reinforce the imprisonment of yesterday’s power.
We Invest In The Past
The past is over, yet so often our power remains trapped in the
emotional investment we’ve made in certain painful events of
that dead past.
The past is over.
But the very power we need to break free of those memories is
instead being diverted into a much more sinister goal. We invest
a lot of time and energy creating a Frankenstein’s monster of
the past, and it’s become too big to handle.
The power you need to heal the past is instead being used to try
to keep it alive. It becomes a tangled mess.
You can’t heal the past until you get more power.
You can’t get more power until you heal the past.
So what’s the answer? First you heal a little bit, and you
retrieve a little power. Then, in your empowered state you heal
a little more and get back a little more power. It happens layer
by layer.
And it all begins with a willingness to change.
I have updated my original Lost Plane Crash video after many comments about parts I had not put in, most notably Charlie’s perspective. Loads of other videos have popped up since of people’s edits including him, so I guess I’m just playing catch-up now really. I have also extended the piece to include the aftermath of the crash from all the characters perspectives we’ve seen so far. It ends with Ben and Juliet going to see Mikhail, and watching footage about the crash on the television. I think that is as much as we currently know about events of that day. Again, I’m sure there’ll be updates as the series develops, at which point I’ll try to do another update.