Accumulation

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  Philippians 3:13b  NIV

Forgetting what is behind – Isn’t it nice to know that Paul was so focused, so spiritual, that he could forget everything that was in the past and just concentrate on what would be in the future?  Don’t you wish you had such amazing discipline?

It’s statements like these that cause us to think of Paul as some sort of superhuman saint.  We’re definitely not like him.  We’re typically consumed with our pasts.  The injury that continues to nag.  The insult we can’t dismiss.  The betrayal that still haunts us.  The choices we made that pushed us off the path.  The people, places, and things that just won’t let us go.  As I’ve written before, “You might be done with your past, but your past isn’t done with you.”  Since this is such a common human experience, how is it possible that Paul claims he just forgets it?

Irvin Yalom puts it like this:

“What can you do now in your life so that one year or five years from now, you won’t look back and have similar dismay about the new regrets you’ve accumulated?  In other words, can you find a way to live without continuing to accumulate regrets?”[1]

Maybe that’s what Paul actually had in mind.  He certainly does not forget the Damascus road experience.  He writes about it often.  Maybe what he’s really saying is that he forgets the failures, the disappointments, the suffering because there is something greater to achieve.  It’s not the words of a superhuman saint that I read.  It’s the words of a man who is doing what it takes to have fewer regrets.  I’d like that too.

Regrets are worms in the soul.  They bury themselves deep under the surface and only come out when it rains tears.  Then you’ll find them scattered all over the smooth pavement of your well-constructed life, wriggling around in order to breathe.  It’s the rain that brings them out.  You might imagine that if you could just stop those teardrops from falling in your life, you’d never have to face the underground regrets, but life isn’t always sunshine, is it?  Tears come, sometimes with a proper warning forecast, sometimes in an unexpected thunderstorm.  Perhaps what matters isn’t removing regrets but rather having fewer of them.  Accumulating less.  Turning over the soul soil every once in awhile so that regrets move on to another location.  Remembering that regrets serve a purpose.  They’re a reminder of what is no longer true of you.  You can voluntarily forget them.

Paul writes, opísō ĕpilanthanŏmenos, “behind forgetting” or “behind neglecting.”  The verb is a passive participle, that is, an action done to the subject, not by the subject.  That seems strange, doesn’t it?  No one is making Paul forget.  He’s doing it himself.  Well, sort of.  The act of forgetting is done by the subject, but its consequence happens to the subject.  I choose not to remember.  I am both the actor and the acted upon.  That might be the most important part of Paul’s “superhuman” statement.  What Paul does is neglect thinking about it.  He puts it out of his mind (literally).  The Negro spiritual might sing “You’ve got to walk that lonesome valley,” but it’s not quite true that you walk it by yourself.  There’s always two of you: the one you were and the one you are.  They aren’t always the same.  One can be forgotten while the other presses on.

Topical Index:  forget, regret, past, ĕpilanthanŏmenos, Philippians 3:13b

[1] Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Being at peace with your own mortality, p. 101.