The past and its influence

Written on January 31st
“Past performance indicates future behavior”; that’s one of the things that I’ve learned in AIESEC. But is it quite so???

It’s one of those days again! I was sitting in front of the computer earlier, trying to convince myself to learn for my exam tomorrow. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it because I was very bored of everything; I realized that it was one of those days. I started wondering (again) what should I do to get out of this emotional state, and then I remembered: “Past performance indicates future behavior”. Ok! Let’s talk about my past!

Nothing really important happened until I reached 7th grade, except falling in love once, and getting it; wanting some few girls for myself and having them all except one. But then, in my 7th grade, I fell in love with the girl that will have kept me in love until the end of my 8th grade. I stopped feeling love for her when she got together with my best friend, at that time (still a very dear friend of mine, as far as I’m concerned) and then “love” was replaced by “lust”. This lust lingered in me for quite a while, but I never tried anything because I respected my friend too much and (being his best friend) I knew exactly how much he loved her and how lost he would feel without her. Coming back to the point: my 7th grade was marked by two main moments (that would decisively influence my life): falling in love with this girl and joining the gang. “The gang” was soon to become my “bunch of friends”.

When I finished 7th grade, it was the summer of 2000 - a summer that will forever by present in my mind and soul. It was then that I started doing (almost) all the stupid stuff (and not only) that I’m still doing nowadays: I started smoking; I started drinking (more than casually); I started thinking about meditation in a more than serious way; I started using it for help; I fell in love with traveling without my parents; I fell in love with people after falling in love with the idea of studying human behavior (male, female and couples). It was quite a summer and I’m more than sure that I will live no other summer like that one.

After finishing my 8th grade, my high-school years began: I was more beautiful than I can express in mere words. It was magnificent; I was flourishing more and more as the days passed by. I did all the (smart, stupid, silly, romantic, immoral, unethical, grotesque, embarrassing, appraisable and so on) things that I could think of, and even more. I knew no boundaries for I was young and all-powerful. There was nothing that could stand in my way when I got something in my head. Those were some really savage times. And they came to an abrupt end at some point between the end of my 10th grade and the beginning of my 12th grade. I know that the end was not that abrupt, but this is how it now seems to me.

Suddenly (when I was in my 12th grade) I felt old, powerless. I couldn’t feel the blood running through my veins anymore. I had lost my ways. All the pure things were fading away and I felt them, each and every one of them.

I didn’t feel the time go by in my 12th grade because I was too focused on getting my admittance exams right, so that I could get to Bucharest. Oh, Bucharest! The land of opportunities! I was so dedicated to this dream of mine that I’d subordinated all my aspects of life to it. I even strived to build a relationship for myself that wouldn’t need my attention when the big moment would have arrived. It succeeded. I succeeded in everything (actually, in almost everything) that I wanted. It was idealistic because I was following my dream; in the same time it was hell-like because I felt that I’m running out of life, that I’m getting older and older as the days go by and I’m not doing anything to prevent it.

I got what I wanted, I arrived in Bucharest, I joined AIESEC and that kept me busy enough to forget (not to forget, but to stop caring) about the life that I was losing. I was indeed getting older. And at some point, I realized that. I got mad; I filled my veins up with life one more time (not to the fullest, but to a certain level that I knew would keep me at least content).

And now I’m here, in front of the computer and writing about my life, my past. All these things are now my past. I see two sides here: first, I’m happy that I’ve lived my life the way I did, because it made me very experience-rich and a lot smarter than I would have become if I had lived a regular life (or a settled one). On the other hand, I’ve come to hate my past because I now know what kind of life I could still have (with all those, oh so powerful, feelings; with all that love and hate, with so many pure things that my mind was not able to ruin, but more than capable of enjoying them) and the worst thing about this is that I wish to have such a life. But, once you’ve reached a peak and started descending (quite a while ago), it’s really hard to get on the same peak again (and I’m not even trying to, I don’t wish that for me. It’s just that this new, higher peak that I’m aiming for seems so far away that it scares the shit out of me. Still, I’m determined to go for it even if it asks for my life, for my whole body and soul).

I’m way off the point, but returning to it: does past performance really predict future behavior? I sincerely think not. I think that what past performance really predicts is what we (sometimes) dream of when we sit alone in the dark and think (or when we let our thoughts run around freely). So, I think that it really predicts a sort of desired (or dreamt of) behavior, not our actual future behavior.

Food for thought: Has your past performance predicted your future behavior?