Look Back, But Don’t Stare

“Look back, but don’t stare.”

Those words come from a Facebook post made by a friend of mine, U.S. Army Ranger Jon Jackson, and there is a lot of wisdom packed into that short sentence. Especially for those of us who have reached the point in life where there is considerably more road behind us than there used to be. Looking back is natural. Sometimes it is even necessary. The danger comes when looking back becomes staring, when remembering where we have been prevents us from seeing where we are going.

There is nothing wrong with reminiscing. In fact, I think we should do more of it. We should tell the stories. We should laugh about the ridiculous things we did when we were younger. We should remember the people who were there with us, especially the ones who are no longer here. We should pull the old photographs out of boxes, scroll through pictures buried deep in our phones, listen to the songs that transport us instantly to another time, and occasionally sit around with old friends telling stories that somehow get a little better every time we tell them.

Those memories matter because those experiences helped make us who we are.

For veterans, the pull of the past can be particularly strong. Military service creates unusually intense periods in our lives. We were young together. We were tired together. We were scared together. We accomplished things together that seemed impossible at the time and occasionally seem even more impossible in retrospect. We knew one another before mortgages and reading glasses and bad knees and retirement accounts became regular topics of conversation. We remember deployments, field problems, late nights in the team room, miserable mornings after those late nights, long flights home, and the strange collection of people who became closer to us than almost anyone else in our lives.

And sometimes, if we are not careful, we start wishing we could go back.

That is where nostalgia becomes dangerous.

Memory has a remarkable editing function. Given enough time, it softens the edges. The miserable parts become funny stories. The boredom disappears entirely. The uncertainty fades. The arguments become anecdotes. The cold somehow becomes less cold, the heat less oppressive, and the months away from home considerably shorter. Even difficult periods of our lives can acquire a warm glow when viewed from twenty or thirty years away.

We remember the brotherhood but forget the loneliness. We remember the adventure but forget the exhaustion. We remember being twenty-five but forget how little twenty-five-year-old us actually understood about the world.

That selective memory can convince us that the best version of our lives exists somewhere behind us.

It doesn’t.

The past contains some of our best moments. That is different from saying it contains the best of our lives.

There is a reason the windshield of a car is considerably larger than the rearview mirror. You need both. The mirror tells you where you have been and occasionally warns you about something coming up behind you. But you cannot drive very far staring into it. Eventually you will miss a turn, drift out of your lane, or run into something directly in front of you.

Life works much the same way.

Looking backward gives us perspective. It reminds us where we came from. It allows us to recognize mistakes, appreciate sacrifices, remember friendships, and understand the experiences that shaped our character. The past is a tremendous teacher. It is simply a terrible place to live.

This becomes especially important during transitions. Leaving the military is an obvious example, but it is hardly the only one. Careers end. Children grow up. Friends move away. Parents die. Organizations change. Bodies age. The places that once defined our lives continue without us. Eventually, every one of us encounters the uncomfortable realization that something we once considered our present has quietly become our past.

The temptation is to cling to it.

Sometimes that means trying to recreate an earlier version of ourselves. Sometimes it means constantly comparing the people around us today with the people we knew twenty years ago. Sometimes it means insisting that everything was harder, better, tougher, smarter, or more meaningful “back then.” And sometimes it simply means spending so much emotional energy remembering what we had that we fail to appreciate what we have.

There is another cost to staring backward: the people standing beside us today can tell when we would rather be somewhere else.

Our spouses should not have to compete with our memories. Our children should not grow up believing the most interesting part of our lives happened before they arrived. Our younger colleagues should not constantly hear that their generation cannot measure up to ours. And the people we lead today deserve more than a leader permanently engaged in a reunion with yesterday.

The goal is not to forget the past. Quite the opposite.

Honor it.

Tell the stories. Keep the photographs. Attend the reunions. Raise a glass to absent friends. Visit the places that mattered. Call someone you have not spoken to in years and remind them of something stupid you both did when you were young. Laugh until your sides hurt. Allow yourself, every once in a while, to wish you could spend one more afternoon with people who once occupied an enormous part of your life.

Then come home.

Because there are still people here.

There are still friendships you have not made. There are still places you have not visited. There are still books you have not read, conversations you have not had, mistakes you have not made, lessons you have not learned, and people whose lives you have not yet influenced. There are new adventures that will never look exactly like the old ones, and that is precisely the point.

The next chapter is not supposed to be a reproduction of the previous one.

One of the privileges of getting older is accumulating memories worth revisiting. One of the responsibilities of getting older is refusing to become trapped inside them.

So look back.

Remember the people. Remember the places. Remember who you were when the world seemed bigger, your knees worked better, and tomorrow felt impossibly far away. Be grateful for all of it, including the parts that hurt.

Just don’t stare.

There is still a lot of road ahead.

_____________________________

Charles served over 27 years in the US Army, which included seven combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with various Special Operations Forces units and two stints as an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also completed operational tours in Egypt, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea and earned a Doctor of Business Administration from Temple University as well as a Master of Arts in International Relations from Yale University. He is the owner of The Havok Journal, and the views expressed herein are his own and do not reflect those of the US Government or any other person or entity.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.