Cities are rarely designed with every detail of the future known and accounted for. Roads are built, utilities are set up, and stores laid out using the best that is known at the time, with the purposes and goals known at the time. Of course, requirements change. Larger roads are needed, buildings fall out of use and are abandoned, and the old stadium can’t handle the new crowds. If you go to Europe you’ll find a lot of roads that were designed for horses drawn carriages, not cars. 

What I’m saying is it’s impossible to predict everything that will change later, and tools/techniques that will be available in the future. You do the best you can with what is known at the time and adapt later on as needs and resources evolve. 

Your mind and personality are similar. You have coping mechanisms, habits, and fears that all exist for historical reasons. They made sense at the time and got you through a lot. But you’re in a different place now, and they might not make sense anymore. Even if you have better tools and support now, those old habits and fears are often hard to leave behind. Maybe you have difficulty committing to people, difficulty trusting people, or a constant dissatisfaction with life and a need to continue achieving or proving yourself. 

Please don’t hate these parts of yourself. You had no idea how much life would change back then. You probably learned some of them as a child surviving a harsh world they had little control over. The best you can do today is take those old survival habits and fit them into the new direction you’re taking your life. It’s good to upgrade the things you can, certainly, but don’t hate the old scars which refuse to disappear. Your old emotional armor might not fit anymore, but you could not have survived the past without it.

It’s not helpful to resent the narrow road built 500 years ago. Nor is it helpful to hate the inefficient and broken city layout trying to support 10x the population it was designed for. But they made sense once, just like the habits or broken parts you resent about yourself. We just have to do our best to create the life that we want using the mind that came out of the early chapters of our life. 

We can’t erase those parts of our history. We can’t go back in time and do things differently. Bitterness and resentment don’t feel good, and I think we’ve both been holding onto it for far too long. Let it go. The path to serenity and peace does not begin with rejecting parts of yourself you cannot change.

Further Reading: If this post resonated with you I think you would benefit a lot from Dr. Kristin Neff’s work on Self Compassion (some is free on her website and she has a book). I’m very picky about self-help books, but her research and practical advice won me over since it was quick to apply and showed results. It’s much easier to build yourself up to your goals when you stop tearing yourself down all the time.