Living Life Free of the Past

“We human beings don’t leave the past in the past. We have the past in the future and when you do that it looks like the past gives you who you are and gives you your life in the present – kind of like two file cabinets. One file cabinet says the past the other one says the future and you’ve got the stuff that should be in the past filing cabinet stored in the future. If you take the past stuff out of the future and put it into the past (and there’s a way to do that) what have you got in the future? Nothing! – Which is wonderful because if who I am in the present is given by the future into which I live, I can create a future for myself that gives me being in the present, that has joy, that has vitality, that has self-expression that has the things that make life worth living.” – Werner Erhard