The past, they say, is another country. In some ways, it is a healthy sign of our evolution, if we consider the past as a place remote and untouched by our current space. There seems to be a sense that we have moved on with the times, seized the present and are marching onwards for the future. It is a luxury to shrug off the past as stepping stones that led us to our fulfilling status quo. It is troubling to live in or to yearn for yesteryears, with the rose-tinted glass of hindsight, misinterpreting it as an infinitely more exotic and exquisite time and place. There seems to also be a masochist aspect, of clinging on to nostalgia. To return to times long gone in our reverie, recreating mundane memories of situations, places and people no longer relevant. It is a little bit like the grief process – you stay with the memories of the deceased because there is something comforting in keeping it near to your eyes and your thoughts. But at some point, we need to let go and accept the scientific impossibility of ever reliving what is now gone. How do we balance the need to stay inspired by something beautiful that touched us in yesteryear, without carrying it inside us as though a corpse? As is always the case in life, whatever that triggers us or hurts us is the place to discover our growth. The lesson is to keep digging inside, to question our current emptiness, and to embed ourselves with the possibilities that sometimes, what we don’t want for our lives, is what will eventually heal us.