We want to believe that we can make promises to ourselves and to others that provide guarantees of safety, the absence of deep conflict, and ultimately the firewall protection against the dissentegration of relationships. From the earliest days of our lives, we become fiercely attached to an idea of permanence of all that we call good. Our problem occurs when like a trapeze artist we look to take hold of the bar that will move us to the next place while never letting go of the bar that brought us to this opportunity. At best we are left pulled into two directions: one that wants to pull us back to where we have been, and one that is pulling us forward to new places and experiences. This dynamic is no longer the constructive tension that seeks resolution through development or compromise, rather a conflict that pulls us to a divided lifestyle, if not apart.

Maturation as a leader requires personal decisions to expand into the new by releasing the hold of the past. We need to feel the tension or pull toward a preferred future, but likewise, we need to stop being defined by the events, ideas, and in many ways, the people of our past. We need to let go of that which constrains us from a greater wholeness in our personal lives. For many of us, the starting point of this movement is in the conviction that love has a reversible effect on evil or a past gone awry. Yes the sum total of our past takes a second seat to the defining power of love.

I have listened to married couples lament about the failures of the past and hear them conclude that “too much has happened” for them to go on relationally. I have experienced the loss of friends because certain dark spots of experience or exposure became defining. I have listened to leaders describe themselves in limited ways because they let the past channels and territory have navigational controls in the present and for the future. All of these situations are robbed of a greater fullness and vitality that comes from not only search, but a courage that remains open and unconditionally present to the newness of things yet explored, and of a reversible past.

Love offers us all a truth, a tenderness, and a way to see through a static and limited interpretation of ourselves and our experiences so that the past is freeing and the present remains open to all possibilities. Yes we must be responsible for the effects of our past actions, but we also need to be responsible to love’s power to see a greater wholeness that integrates that which is good and otherwise within us. Our addiction to keeping permanent a present good, or in distancing ourselves from our personal experiences with past wrongs, impedes a deepening and transformation that is required for those who want expanding joy, deepening relationships, and reversing a past to free a greater present.

The next time you look into the eyes of a relationship gone bad, a situation that seems impossible, or into the depths of your own soul, choose differently from your norm. Listen to the truths just beyond the well worn words and thoughts of your past. Look to what is there, and has been there for all to see if we let love recondition our viewing lens.