Confession is Good

While looking at a cartoon, I noticed the apparent worldview depicted that led to the appearance of ruminations, that is repeated thoughts that occur during a time when one is not thinking of anything in particular.  Certain kinds of ruminations, in particular thoughts about the past, predominate in predisposed individuals.  In the cartoon, it was thoughts about the past wrongs done to him or that he imagined had been done when he said, on the phone: ““Oh, not much. Just sitting here sifting through an old scrapbook of past injustices and imagined slights.””  In my case, or the neurosurgeon’s case, it was thoughts about the failures one had had, the mistakes one had made.  Why does one personality remember the wrongs done to him and another remember the wrongs that he himself had committed?  Why does a third not think about the past at all?  Yet a fourth thinks about the past but thinks about the good things that he has done or were done to him.

So how to think about the past?  More relevant, how to write about the past?  More in another post.