You’re Not Reliving the Past, You’re Rewriting It

The other day, I was sharing something small with my husband — just a simple moment, something that happened in passing with another mom. But as I spoke it out loud, I paused. I realised the story I was narrating wasn’t just about what happened. It was about how I saw it. How I felt it. It was my version of the moment. My perception wrapped around the facts.

And suddenly, the insight came in: nothing we experience is ever entirely real in the way we think. Because what happened has already happened. It’s gone. The moment doesn’t live anymore, except in how we carry it, how we replay it, how we choose to give it shape again through words and memory.

There’s no measurement to the past. It cannot be weighed or proven. And if that’s true, then there is no real past, and no defined future either. Only this. This very moment, this breath, this now. Everything that matters is always happening here.

But we don’t live like that, do we? We drag the past around, tying events together like beads on a thread, stringing meaning and context where maybe none is needed. We carry the weight of joy and the ache of sorrow based on how we processed those moments. We say, “That was such a beautiful time,” or “That still hurts,” not because the moment itself holds power, but because our perception did.

And perception, let’s be honest, isn’t divine. It’s deeply human. It’s filtered through our judgments, our expectations, our fears. It’s shaped by what we want to believe about ourselves and the world. The way we see others, the way we think they see us, none of it is neutral. It’s all colored in.

And when perception doesn’t align with expectation, we feel unsettled. Off-center. And because we’re so used to stability - to routine, to roles, to predictable emotional weather - that misalignment feels threatening. 

We call that peace - a life that follows our script. But maybe peace isn’t repetition. Maybe peace isn’t control. Maybe peace is what arises when we stop forcing everything to match our idea of what it should be. Maybe peace is allowing things to be what they are, without needing them to fit into a story.

But we’ve been taught to keep the story alive. To keep retelling it. Even after an experience has ended, we bring it up again - not just to process it, but to confirm it happened the way we thought. We want to know we were right. That we understood it correctly. That we mattered in it.

And yet, with every retelling, we make the moment smaller. We put it in a container. We create a script, and then expect the future to follow the same cues.

This is where we seal our fate - in our need for predictability. We pick out the “good parts” or the things we wish had gone differently. We assign meaning to smiles, silences, pauses. And we do this to make sense of life. To prepare for what’s next. To protect ourselves from being surprised again.

But there’s a quiet cost.

Because when you do this, when you keep confirming the story you also keep confirming who you think you are. You trap yourself in a version of you that may not even be true anymore. 

So maybe the answer isn’t to talk more. Maybe it’s to experience more. To notice. To witness. To let life land without always giving it a headline. Because the more you talk, the more you write the same narrative. And the more you do that, the more you resist the very growth you say you want.

You pray for clarity, for release, for transformation. But then, every experience becomes another piece of evidence for the story you’ve been carrying. A reason to hold on. A way to protect your identity. Even when your soul is longing to outgrow it.

Let this be the moment where you loosen the grip.

Let this be the moment where you stop needing everything to fit, and just let it be.

Let this be the moment where you stop asking, “Was I right?” and start asking, “Am I free?”

Because the truth is - you’re not reliving the past. You’re rewriting it. Every time you recall it, reframe it, or re-explain it, you’re giving it shape again. You’re deciding what stays and what gets left behind.

And maybe that’s where your real power is — not in what happened, but in what you choose to not carry forward.