The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.
– William Faulkner
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The past is an inherent part of the present, as everything that has happened before, not only during our lives but also our predecessors’, bear consequences to this day and will keep doing so tomorrow. We are plagued by regret due to choices we have made or opportunities we have not seized, by our surroundings perpetually kneading and molding us, and by the illusion of being able to make choices out of free will when in truth we have been conditioned by past trauma to make such decisions. In other words, we are but the fruit of nature and nurture. We are but the victims of decisions that have never had anything to do with us in the first place. We are but puppets of ghosts from the past who have made it their mission to haunt the Earth until it turns into flames. None of us are individuals, we are multitudes.