Ghosts

Moving from one stage of life to another is never a clean break.

We expand our families, we change jobs, we change communities. We may move three states away or from one company to another.

But whatever our complete body of work in life has been, including our hangups, our spiritual scabs, our grudges, the times we’ve hurt others or have been hurt, it all follows us. Our ideas about how life was meant to be or may be someday, our decisions, our reputations, our identities…they lurk behind, seeking to make a home unseen in our new location.

In some cases, but not always, relationships follow us as well. Our immediate families, sure. That’s usually a given. Past classmates, acquaintances, co-workers, and friends may follow us, too. If not physically, we may keep track of each other through other means. The ones we want, anyway. And that always ends up being a smaller list than we expect.

Of course, not everything that follows us is desirable. There are those instances when we’re running from something; where we hope that certain elements of our past won’t notice we’ve left and subsequently won’t find us. We may want to leave parts of ourselves behind to haunt places we no longer inhabit, cursed to remain as testaments to times that had run their course.

But it turns out that we are the ones who are haunted. We are the ones doomed to address the ghosts of who and where we’ve been.

One of the worst things we can do is ignore them. It tends to make them angry. They end up looming larger, whispering their reminders, possessing us in ways we can’t see. No, they must be acknowledged and confronted, no matter how fearful we may feel.

A few exorcisms may see success. With a few clear boundaries, a few stern conversations, we may be able to banish some ghosts back to wherever we found them. With others, some act of catharsis can strip them of their power. With still others, only time and patience will cause them to fade away into irrelevance. And with still yet others, we need someone else to help remove them.

But some remain. And for those most clingy, stubborn apparitions, those most belligerent and accusing spirits of times past, we may only wait out their torment.

For those, we endure, taking small steps toward hope where we can.