Do Our Experiences Shape Us?

Who are we really? 

Are we a reflection of our hopes, dreams and our most noble aspirations?

Or are we just the sum total of every moment we experience?

According to Channing Tatum’s character Leo in the movie “The Vow” it is the latter.  In fact his words verbatim were:  “The thing is each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we ever experience, with all the people we've ever known.  And it's these moments that become our history.”

If this is true do all our joyful, blissful and even our heart wrenching experiences make each of us who we are on this journey?  If it does; it could have far-reaching implications.    
As an educator I am constantly surprised by young people; mostly I am amazed at their capacity for hope – their hope for what is to come next.  It isn’t that they lack fear; I think they may have fear, but their limited experience has left them unjaded by fear.  Their blind faith is astonishing and so very brave.

Maybe that is what we lack as middle aged people seeking love again.  We lack the blind faith that we possessed in our youth.  We have forgotten how to embrace that hope that things will somehow work out as we stand comfortably on the dock just dipping our toe in the water rather than taking that running jump and leaping blindly into the unknown.  

Our painful experiences have taught us that we are indeed vulnerable; we are not invincible as we thought ourselves to be in our younger days.  And that flies exactly in the face of what love demands.

Love by its very essence is the ultimate act of blind faith and hopeless confidence.  It is the unwavering steadfast belief that one person holds the key to your happiness and promises to deliver it.  The trouble is that because we are here on this journey searching for love we have obviously all suffered disappointment and disillusionment and have firsthand experience that the promise of love doesn’t always deliver. 

So why on earth would we or could we ever trust it again?  So we approach it with caution and apprehension taking care not to expose too much of ourselves and we keep suitors at arms length to protect ourselves against further pain and anguish.  Experience has taught us (self-protection) well.  Who could blame us for the trepidation evident in our actions?

I suppose we cannot ever escape our past, especially the disappointments, the mistakes and the pain.  But perhaps we should reframe our history.  Just as scholars study history so the mistakes of the past are not repeated, so can we.  We are not doomed to become failures in the arena of love again.  We can and should learn from previous errors and missteps in our earlier romances.  Own our role in love’s past failures. 

It is only then can we be certain to not repeat those perilous events again and hope can be restored.