The Past Is Tomorrow

In Kung Fu Panda, Master Oogway spits some truth when he says "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why they call it a present." My mom liked that quote so much that she dramatically reenacts it if my brother or I appear to be stressed about "a mystery" as it is called. She tells us that today is a gift that we will only experience once. Time after time growing up I've heard someone tell me "Don't worry about it! The past is in the past!" or "It's water under the bridge!" or "Let sleeping dogs lie!" or "Let bygones bygones!" In fact, just last week I used those words in my blog post. But is the past really in the past? It seems to me like people carry it everywhere they go. Isn't the simple act of learning just carrying the past with you? You are your past. Everything you do in the future is determined by the past.

page 115 - Volume 2

Everybody knows about PTSD... which is kind of like carrying your past with you (to the extreme). Only everybody carries their past don't they? It is intertwined with our future. You cannot have one without the other. This summer my friends and I were driving up north, discussing the issue of the past and present (lol don't judge us for our choice of entertainment), and we wondered if there was such a thing as free will. Isn't every choice we make predetermined by our past? For example, lets pretend I visit a mall one day and then revisit a week after. There are two stores I can go to, but I only have time to visit one. Last week, store A had a nice sales associate and store B had a sales associate that muttered some choice words under her breath as she glared and charged my debit card. It would make sense for me to be inclined to visit store A again instead of store B. Right there, my past influenced my future. No true free will, just carrying the past with me.

In volume 2, page 115 of Maus, photographs of Vladek's past cover the panels. If you look towards the bottom, there is no page number. All of the photographs and Vladek's emotions make me feel as if this page was meant to symbolize his past. However... it begs the question: what page is it? That's the funny thing. There is no one page that symbolizes Vladek's past. It is everywhere in the book. Similar to the fact that Vladek's past is not confined to a single page, nobody's past is confined to a certain part of their life. The past is everywhere around us. It is (literally) our past, present, and future.

Vladek's exposure to extreme trauma amplified his connection to his past, but in essence, he is like the end of a spectrum for the general population. People may not realize it, but they can relate to him more than they know. Vladek's past is with him constantly in his present, similarly we all carry our past to our present. Otherwise we would basically be acting like newborn babies all day. If this is true, the past and the present blend together. It can be difficult to pinpoint exactly where your past and present are. Can you tell where your past and present begin and end?


Lyrics of the week: "It's just a story though, is it a story though? I can't tell if it happened cause it feels impossible. Don't know whether it was real or a dream, imagination playing tricks on me." from Murakami by Made in Heights. I can't tell whether my past is my present, my future, or both.