I mean that you should avoid living in unpleasant past scenes and remembrances. Absolutely to forget or wipe out completely from memory anything it has once taken note of is impossible. For everything you have seen, learned, sensed or heard is stored away, and is capable under certain circumstances of being brought to view again.
In place of the term forgetting it would be better to say you should cultivate the power of driving from your mind and putting out of sight whatever makes you feel unhappy or whatever you discover that is unprofitable to remember.
It is impossible absolutely to wipe out anything your memory has once written on its tablets, for whatever the scene, event or experience may have been, it has become a part of your real self or spirit. In other words your spirit is made up of all its experiences and consequent remembrances extending to an infinite past. Of these some are vivid, some vague, and much is buried out of present sight, but capable under certain circumstances of being called to remembrance. To destroy such remembrance, if possible, would be to destroy so much of your mind.
All experiences are valuable for the wisdom they bring or suggest. But when you have once gained wisdom and knowledge from any experience, there is little profit in repeating it, especially if it has been unpleasant, You do actually repeat it when you remember it or live it over again in thought. This is what people are doing who brood over past misfortunes and disappointments.
It is what people are doing when they recall with regret their youth as bright and joyous as compared with the gloom of their middle or old age. Live in the pleasant remembrance of your youth, if you so desire. That will do you good. But do not set it in its brightness and freshness against a dark background of the present. Do not think of it in that vein.
Remember that the time of your infancy and youth, with all its freshness and newness, was also the time of some other people's old age when the world seemed stale and joyless, when to them all that life seemed capable of yielding seemed exhausted, when nothing seemed to remain but to wither and die. Remember also that today if the world seems less bright than formerly, if the sun seems setting instead of rising, it seems now to the boy and girl of ten or fifteen as it did to you at that age.
No person could hold his or her physical body and enjoy life who as they lived on lived in the past and refused to set or open their minds to the future. In so doing they accumulate more and more of the old and relatively lifeless thought, and this element materializes itself on the body. Their flesh, bone and blood then become an actual expression of the dead and inert spirit.
To live carrying such an ever-increasing load must result only in weakness and misery so long as the spirit can carry it. But the mind rejecting the old which it has no use for and ever pressing on to the new, adds the new thought to itself, and this newness of idea will materialize a newer body.
You do actually make the "things before" pleasant or unpleasant for you according as you think of them in advance.
There is a class of people who, if in difficulties and anyone suggests a way out, instantly raise objections and find difficulties in the plan proposed. When in thought we so find difficulties, we actually make them. To lay awake nights and brood, devise, turn over or invent possible coming troubles is force and industry ill employed in preparing the way for those troubles.
In all business we must press on in mind to the successful result. We must see in mind or imagination the thing we plan completed, the system or method organized and in working order, the movement or undertaking advancing and ever growing stronger and more profitable. To spend time and force in looking back and living past troubles or obstacles over again, and out of such living and mental action to conjure more difficulties or oppositions, is literally to spend time and force in destroying your undertaking, or in manufacturing obstacles to put in your own way.
Forgetting the things behind and pressing on to those before is a maxim having a thousand intensely practical applications. Every business success is founded on it.
Men who cease to live in old methods and press forward to new, achieve the greatest financial success. But men who having started out during their physical youth with the new, allow themselves with advancing years to hold on to what was new in their youth, but which is relatively old now, are really on the back track. Money may continue to pour in upon them, but their methods are really out of date, and a few more years will see their business superseded by the newer system.
If you were debilitated, weak or sick yesterday at any hour, do not commence today with living in thought in the same weakness or debility at that hour. Forget it, live away from it, and press onward to the thought of being strong, well and vigorous at that hour.
When you in mind look behind and live behind the thought of the sickness, weakness or indisposition of yesterday, you are actually making the conditions for having the same physical troubles. When you at the day's commencement in thought look before to the new thing, the thought of health and strength at the time your lack of vigour commenced, you are making the conditions for realizing such health and strength.
If it does not come the first day of such trial, try the next, and the next after that. The state you seek will come in time.
Perhaps you say to me in mind: But how can you prove these assertions? They have not been realized in our time. "Decay and death at last overtake all"
You can commence yourself to prove them. If you experiment with any of the methods here suggested for working thought to profitable result and you prove for yourself ever so little, you must thereby gain some faith in this law. If the law is by you proven a little, is it unreasonable to say it will prove more if followed in this direction?
Unreasoning prejudices are bred out of this continual living in the past. The man of sixty or seventy often lives in moods, usages and customs peculiar to his youth. He accepts these as the most fit and proper thing for him. He would probably regard with disfavour and prejudice the man who at his daily business should wear the knee breeches, stockings, waistcoat, ruffled shirt and cocked hat of the eighteenth century. Yet such style was common one hundred years ago. His great-grandfather probably wore such a suit. Yet his great-grandfather would probably have regarded with the same disfavour and prejudice the man dressed in the fashion of today. So a few years relatively have begotten these two unreasoning prejudices with the great-grandfather and great-grandson, founded only on the fact that they were fashions peculiar to the youth of each.
It is, of course, impossible for a person to fly in the face of popular custom or usage--to dress differently or in certain ways live differently without bringing on him unpleasant and even injurious results. For the action of many minds sending toward you ever the thought of prejudice, dislike or ridicule would tend to injure mind and body.
But the sentiment which sends this kind of thought toward another, who departs from any established custom, when that person thereby affects no one's peace or comfort, is a gross error. It is an unreasoning mental tyranny which so regards with hostile mind a man who, e.g., should today adopt the costume of the ancient Greeks--a garb, by the way, more sensible and comfortable than ours.
Less than two hundred years ago such a sentiment mobbed the man in England who carried the first umbrella. This sentiment comes of that fossilized condition of mind which persists in living in the things that are behind and averts itself from such as are before.
Life is a continual advance forward. If we are advancing forward, it is better to look forward. And all are advancing, even the dullest, the grossest, and most perverse. A mighty, eternal and incomprehensible force pushes us all forward. But while all are so being pushed, many linger and look back. Unconsciously, they oppose this force. So to do is to court evil, pain, disease and distress.
Whatever the mind is set upon, or whatever it keeps most in view, that it is
