No matter how active in life you may be, you are also an observer of your life as it reveals itself to you. You witness your life as if from a far-off land, as it were. This is as if you are not experiencing your life but rather are watching your life as it slides past you. You watch your life slip over the edge.

On this basis, we can say there are two lives you live, the one you enact on stage, and the one you watch as it dances before you. What a performer you are. You are a virtual acrobat of life.

Possibly there is a third life mixed in, and this is the life you interpret. What you interpret takes precedence. Whether you interpret your life pro or con, your interpretation eggs you on. Actually, you emblazon your interpretation. You embroider it. You go by how you see your life.

If you see someone ready to hit you, you are prompted to get into your fight mode. You do not always put the best light on your life.

You may look for hurt, for hurt may be what you are accustomed to enacting, and so you respond with your fists up. If you perceive someone giving you a diamond ring, you run to hug the person. What is true or not true at this point is irrelevant. Your interpretation rules the roost.

If, let's say, even if you are accurate in your assessment of negativity, still, don't hold it to you as a trophy. You are not a head-hunter. You don't want to cut off someone's head. You don't want to go over and over an offense and hug it to you.

If you don't desire to be offended in the first place, then let your thoughts about how hurt your feeling are be blown away by the winds of change, or, perhaps, imagine a butterfly that doesn't alight for long anyway before it goes off to alight somewhere else. Farewell, ills of the past, true or imagined.

You owe no debt to keep the past alive. If you owe a debt, it is to free yourself from the past. Or you may want to think of this as freeing the past from you. Drop the irreverent past from the present. Start anew. Look at life in a new light. Give your life a second chance. You don't want to pin yourself down to the past.

When you have a black and blue mark, it just naturally fades. Then it is gone. You have no say about this, nor are you sorry to see the black and blue mark go.

When your heart has been bruised, let interior bruising fade as well. In this sense, no longer keep the home fires burning.

Have a different loyalty today. Be loyal to your Higher Self. Kiss past wounds good-bye. Good riddance. Unless you let go, you impose the past upon yourself. You masquerade as a victim. You become an imposter. You play a role that does not suit you nor does it benefit you. Be yourself, free and clear. Do not make your assailer a victim, for you are not a victor, and you do not win anything. Neither a victor nor victim be.

There is the word erstwhile. It means past, former, once upon a time. It means no longer. The past was a blip. It never really was, anyway. Why keep the past in front of you? Lay the past to rest. It is not for you to fester erstwhile wounds. It is for you to free wounds from you. Free the past from bondage. You don't do the past a favor to coddle it or frame it and hang it on the wall over your bed.

Begone, past, begone.