[null, {"document_url": "https://ankurbhatia23.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/blasts-from-the-past/", "unformatted_src": "https://i2.wp.com/farm1.static.flickr.com/126/322266123_c777cfbbca.jpg", "src": "https://i2.wp.com/farm1.static.flickr.com/126/322266123_c777cfbbca.jpg", "formatted_filename": "c cfbbca", "rendered_width": 500, "rendered_height": 500}, null]
Ankur Bhatia in Friendship, Life December 29, 2008 1,035 Words I have been wanting to write something like this for a long time but have just not been able to gather my thoughts. Even now as i make another attempt to link my thoughts i am no where near it . So i am just gonna write the way it comes to my mind, thought after thought.

Past is something that everyone has. But not everyone wants to remember it. It haunts some and motivates others. And then there are those who love to live in the past coz it was just so great and the present is nothing compared to it. The advice that is given by friends and loved ones of such people is to Move on!!. But what does it mean exactly? And does it work? Is it good to move on in all such cases?

A lot of people will think that i am talking about a romantic relationship. I am not. I am talking about all things that involve love, commitment and passion. It can be a relationship between a couple who are madly in love, two very good friends, a father and a son,your college, your bat or racket(for sports freaks like me), your first kiss and so on.

Why do some people always compare their present with their past. Like how life was in school and how it is in college. To some extent we all have done it but the ones who don’t accept the new life are the ones who have trouble coping with change. Moving on is another way of asking to cope with change. Still it confuses me.

Suppose there is a couple who have had a great relationship for many years but somehow it just doesn’t work out. One out of the two will make the first attempt to let go and move on. But does it mean that this person was not as serious about the relationship as the other. I mean if you make a move too quickly you feel you are still cheating your partner and if you are too late then by that time you have already started feeling like a looser. But to talk about a romantic relationship is the easiest.

What about the family of people who lost their lives in the Mumbai attacks? what do they do? can they move on? and should they move on? If someone tries to, they would feel ashamed of them self for trying to forget the love of this family member. But if they don’t then they will have this in their head all the time. In such a case they can just be proud of him and live the rest of their lives with a big hole in it coz they can never move on from that. But what you can move on from also changes from person to person.

Recently i had gone to my college for a sort of reunion and i met most of my gang. As soon as i entered i felt this weird love and affection towards my college that i had not felt before. I looked at my college and my hostel in a very different way. A way in which a failed scientist looks at his past accomplishments. With disbelief. Anyway we started talking and catching up on what each one of us was doing and finally decided to play cricket for old times sake. Now cricket is something that i am most nostalgic about so by the time our reunion ended i was so full with the feeling of nostalgia that i just didn’t wanna leave the college. I wished that these days had not ended and i could still live in the hostel.When I finally said goodbye to the college i started comparing my last two years after college with my years in college. I was never a great achiever in academic terms but still i felt that i had achieved more in college then i did after it. This feeling didn’t leave me even after i drove back home. And It still hasn’t. Why is it like this? Why does one look back at the years gone by when he knows he can’t relive them?

I guess one looks back at his friends, relationships, accomplishments either when he feels he has achieved a lot or when he is scared that he wont be able to better it. Like i have said before its very difficult to make friends once you cross that magic age, so one just can’t get over the fact that friendship has actually ended and it will be very difficult to make as good friends.Still its just difficult, not impossible and the same is true for other relationships as well. But this does not occour to us when we hare hit by blast from the past.

In most cases how do people deal with disasters of the past? By disasters i mean anything that could have uprooted your life. They just ignore it. Yes. Just pretend to overlook the obvious for sometime and soon it will stop existing. This is what people do to move on. Just forget that you had a best friend or a bat which won you the man of the match and it will stop bothering you. You will learn to live with it. But how long can you adjust like this in life? And a friend or bat is still easy, what about the woman who lost her husband/son? what does she do? forget about him? Pretend he didn’t exist? Cmon!!!

Moving on is easier said than done as all of us will experience these blasts from time to time. It will happen whenever we see something that reminds us of someone or the other way around. But each one of us has to find our own ways to nullify the effects of these blasts as there is no obvious answer as far as i know. And If there is then i guess i am just too myopic to see it.

P.S. I just realized that i have written so much but the funny thing is that i feel like i still havn’t made my point.







5 thoughts on “Blasts from the past”

