Looking back to see forward
To remember implies that there’s something we’ve forgotten—and this is often true. Being alive is synonymous with forgetting. In fact, you might say we’re born not just to remember, but also to forget.
In moments that are too overwhelming, forgetting can become a refuge. It’s a survival mechanism—a way of pushing out what we cannot process in the moment. This ability, in many ways, keeps us sane.
Aldous Huxley described this beautifully after taking an experimental dose of mescaline. He recounted how life-changing it was to see how much of reality the mind filters out. It’s easy to believe we see the whole picture, but this is never the case. As Anaïs Nin said, “We see reality as we are.”
Yet, there are moments when we experience a sacred pause—moments that allow us to take in more than we ordinarily would.
Huxley called this expanded awareness the “Mind at Large.” In that state, the mind operates without filters or preconceptions. It’s wide open to life as it is, revealing beauty in the simplest of things. During his experience, he noticed details—the colours, shapes, sensations, and sounds—that would ordinarily be lost in everyday consciousness.
He said he would have been more than happy not to be anywhere else for a very long time. And that’s the practice: learning to rest in this place of being and be more in the remembering than forgetting.
Just as we can open to what is here in the present, we can also turn this curiosity toward the past. And as we do, just like Huxley, we might see things in our past that were previously invisible to us.
The Ghanaian symbol Sankofa depicts a bird flying forward while looking backward. It means “to go back and fetch it,” reminding us of the power in reclaiming lessons from the past. It invites us to honour our history, carry its wisdom forward, and create a future rooted in self-awareness and connection to our origins.
Our most creative and empowered responses to life come from acknowledging and digesting what lies behind us—the difficulties and despair, as well as the joys, connections, and gratitude. To have a healthy relationship with the past is to come to a place where we can say, “I accept it as it was.” And it’s a continuous process—always beginning, never ending—just like any other relationship. Past doesn’t change but our relationship to it can.
Part of this process is recognising how much we’ve pushed out—how much we’ve forgotten that might do us good to remember. This faculty of remembering is just as essential as the one of forgetting.
If we don’t acknowledge what we carry from the past, we can’t fully access our creativity or live in meaningful connection with the present. The act of remembering allows us to reclaim these pieces of ourselves and weave them into a fuller, richer experience of life.