Past Life Therapy: The Good Old Days

"Pardon me, ma'am," Ally said to the woman with a fur coat and gold jewellery. She'd only been there an hour - long enough to walk to town from the grove where her mother's dimensional portal dropped her. The woman glanced at her and motioned to the man following. He stepped up and hit Ally across the arm with a riding crop.
- Dancing in the Ashes, Richard Friesen

People have a way of being surprising. I remember having a conversation with a colleague once - some-one humourous and quite perceptive. We were talking away, as you do, and she suddenly started telling me all about her past life therapy (meaning past "lives" from before she was born). This is not my thing - I've always thought there is enough to do in the life I have without having baggage from some imaginary person back in dim antiquity too. What I've always noticed about this "past lives" business (and it is a business) is that people always claim to have been some exotic kind of person in a former life. They were a Queen or a princess, or a great warrior, or a highly respected local leader who made some dreadful mistake, or an amazingly talented artist... And some pin their current angst and "unresolved issues" on having formerly been some singularly gifted character who went over to the dark side. Not to mention those who were of course aeons ahead of everyone else in a chosen field of expertise, and died either persecuted or unrecognised. Now their brilliance struggles to reveal itself.

We love to imagine don't we? It has it's benefits - we sometimes hear the point better when it comes in a story, or we turn our imagining into a creative form. So there we are, right in the middle of that Jane Austen movie, wafting into the room in that dress, delivering that killer of an understated line... I enjoy Austen's work - Persuasion in particular. Sometimes I think it is possible to forget that she very consciously wrote fiction - and she was ironic with it. I was reading one of my favourite science fiction stories recently, Dancing in the Ashes by Richard Friesen. It's loosely based on the old Cinderella fairy tale. Friesen was inspired to write it after his friend David Brin volunteered at a junior high school and said he was astounded that 13 and 14 year old girls he met there wanted to go back and live in the Middle Ages. Ah the good old days, when shining knights in polished armour dropped their capes on the ground so ladies wouldn't have to step in muddy puddles. Indeed.

Friesen's story makes me laugh every time I read it. He knows just what he is upsetting when he has Ally, the main character, travel back in time through a dimensional portal:

"During the slow hopeless walk back to town she purged her soul. Step into a new world and people would hand you boundless feasts and deep red wine. Right. A prince would just happen by and sweep her off her feet. Stupid. Castles and banners and men fighting for her honour. Hogwash. Dared she hope for a warm fire and stew rather than bread, milk rather than water?"

His story has a sort of happy ending - it's bittersweet in a way because the present follows Ally back in time, and it is a reality from her real life that she has to confront. It's a clever twist - putting present life therapy into a life in the past. Why do we imagine ourselves as higher ranking, notable, powerful, mysteriously different to everyone else? The reality of the olden days of yore was that there was no upward mobility. As Ally finds out:

"I'm just a scullion, but if I work very hard, and learn the things you know, you might sponsor me as a kitchen servant, a downstairs maid."
Matilda brightened. "Yes! I just might."
"And being a chambermaid upstairs?"
"Oh, no, child. Sculls cannot become chambermaids."

That was the good old days. People were born into a class and died in it - and most people were not nobility. The love of escapism and conferring honour upon ourselves, be it accolades or imagined heroism in the face of hardship, is a strong temptation.

It's not a bad thing to imagine a little, to use our abilities, and to desire to make a difference. When the imagining becomes fantasy, and the fantasy is idolised, then it's a waste of who we really are - we are avoiding ourselves. We don't need to create extra personas that we can't live up to anyway, or throw money to "past life" therapists. Most of us are ordinary and unique. We have freedoms that people in the past never had. We have sufferings that are part of being human, and the capacity to come alongside others. The people I appreciate the most are real - they laugh, cry, and live in the here and now. We are given one life to live, one day at a time, with others. I'm grateful for mine. This one life, with all it involves, is to appreciate don't you think?