WE all have a room in our minds where the past lives. Some call it memory, others call it baggage. It is filled with faded moments – some precious and some painful. The successes we revisit for confidence and the failures we replay are often far too much. While that room can hold valuable lessons, it is not where we are meant to live.

The trouble begins when we start hanging up curtains in that room, rearranging the furniture and calling it home.

There is a line I often reflect on: Treat the past as a separate room you can visit but don’t live there because the truth is, the past has no power over us unless we give it the keys.

This does not mean we should ignore history or pretend our scars do not exist; quite the opposite. Sometimes, we need to visit that room to gather something we left behind: a truth we missed, a lesson we skipped
or even a version of ourselves we have forgotten.

However, we go there with intention and not attachment. We visit, we retrieve and we leave. We do not unpack our bags.

Take Khalid ibn al-Walid, for instance. One of the greatest military minds of the early Islamic world. But it didn’t start that way. He was once among Islam’s fiercest opponents – he fought against the Prophet Muhammad in the Battle of Uhud. Yet later, he embraced the faith and went on to become one of its most legendary commanders, earning the title Saifullah – the Sword of God.

Imagine if he had stayed in that other room, chained by guilt, regret or public shame. Imagine if he had let his past dictate his future. History would have remembered him as a different man altogether.

But Khalid chose otherwise. He did not live in the past; he took what he needed – his strategic mind, his discipline and his drive – and redirected it towards something greater. His legacy was not in his mistakes but in his transformation.

That is the key. The past is a reference point, not a residence. If we linger too long, it becomes a trap – one lined with stress, self-pity and procrastination. “If only I had…”, “I should have…”, “Back then, I was better…”. Sound familiar? These thoughts are heavy – they slow us down – and before long, we find ourselves stuck, not moving forward, just spinning in place.

Even science, in its pursuit of truth, does not get stuck. It corrects itself. Moves on.

Remember Pluto? Once declared the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto had its planetary status revoked in 2006. People were up in arms – students rewrote their science notes, astronomers debated passionately and some of us felt genuinely betrayed. But here is the thing: science did not dwell on the emotional fallout. It adjusted, recalibrated and moved forward.

In 2023, new discoveries and reclassifications reopened the conversation, with some even suggesting Pluto may deserve its planetary badge again.

The takeaway? Even knowledge evolves. What we once believed may no longer hold. What seems discarded may find new relevance down the line. But the process never stops; it keeps moving. So should we.

This same spirit echoes in The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Amir, the novel’s protagonist, spends years haunted by a childhood betrayal. His guilt eats away at his adult life, colouring his decisions and clouding his joy. It is only when he returns to Afghanistan – revisiting the past with the goal of righting a wrong – that he finds redemption. He did not go back to wallow; he went back to repair and that made all the difference.

The point is not to cut ourselves from our histories but to know when to leave the room. The past has value but it has no vote. It may inform us but it cannot define us unless we let it.

If you are still replaying an old failure, quoting an old version of yourself and measuring your progress against a time that no longer exists, pause and ask yourself: “What exactly am I holding on to?” More importantly, is it helping me move forward?

There is only one way to live life: going forward. Progress does not require perfection. It only asks that we keep walking.

If you must look back, do so with gratitude or clarity, not attachment. Visit the past with purpose – pick up what you need and close the door behind you, then face forward. Because that is where life happens.

Dr Nahrizul Adib Kadri is a professor of biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and the principal of Ibnu Sina Residential College, Universiti Malaya.

Comments: [email protected]