You drag it around like a ball and chain
You wal­low in the guilt; you wal­low in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gut­ter, bringin’ every­body down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I’d like to find your inner child and kick its lit­tle ass

Get over it
Get over it
All this bitchin’ and moanin’ and pitchin’ a fit
Get over it, get over it

Get over it
Get over it
It’s got­ta stop some­time, so why don’t you quit
Get over it, get over it¹

Did my moth­er’s vio­lent rages make me afraid to con­front peo­ple? Did my father’s silent dis­ap­proval lead to my low self esteem? Maybe. Can I blame them for my present prob­lems? Sure I can. Is it use­ful to do so? Fuck, no!

If cir­cum­stances are coin­ci­den­tal, not causal, then retain­ing the respons­es of my child­hood for sit­u­a­tions in my present is an under­stand­able but unfor­tu­nate choice.

There are those of us who are “real­i­ty based”, to whom past events have passed and are there­fore irrel­e­vant. They may or may not be affect­ed by those events, but they pay no atten­tion to them. For them it appears easy to say “get over it!”

Others of us are “self-​examiners”, per­ceiv­ing a causal­i­ty between what has hap­pened to us and what is hap­pen­ing now. We are shaped by both the tri­umphs and tragedies, the wins and wounds, of our lives. Some of us use those events as expla­na­tions or excus­es for present dys­func­tion­ing. Some of those say, “What do expect from a per­son (with alco­holic par­ents, being raised on wel­fare, grow­ing up in the ghet­to, pam­pered by afflu­ence, etc.)?” 

The movie West Side Story set this theme to song ².

 

It is one thing to be cog­nizant of the things which have shaped our lives up to this point. It is anoth­er to jus­ti­fy our inac­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, poor self esteem, lack of con­fi­dence, etc. as the inevitable results of those influ­ences. In oth­er words act­ing as vic­tims of events rather than being account­able for the role our beliefs, choic­es, atti­tudes, and behav­ior play in how our lives unfold.

You may say, “But So-​and-​So has had a hard life. Give them a break.” Is that a remark of com­pas­sion or an act of aban­don­ing them to the prison of their lim­it­ing beliefs? Helen Keller, Stephen Hawkings, and Nelson Mandela, to name just a few, all had hard lives. What they do not share with the vic­tims of sim­i­lar hard­ships is an atti­tude that refus­es to let their past dic­tate their present or future.

Whenever I avoid some­thing I want to do, or feel I should do, because, I am “bummed, too tired, stressed out, inca­pable, oppressed, mis­un­der­stood, etc., I am sell­ing myself out. That betray­al of myself need not be an addi­tion­al source of shame but a sort of smoke alarm alert­ing me that I am just sit­ting par­a­lyzed in a house that is burn­ing down. Perhaps I am believ­ing the lies that impor­tant peo­ple in my life told me or which I cre­at­ed to explain unex­plained events in my past. Perhaps it is a warn­ing that I am head­ing in the wrong direc­tion and those unfin­ished items on my to-​do list should not be done. Perhaps my wants are direct­ed at mirages and my cur­rent val­ues are false gods.

It is so easy to become attached to the way we have always looked at things and the way we have always done things. Even our iden­ti­ties, although con­ceived in shame and frus­tra­tion, for­ti­fied with mis­takes and loss­es and and shroud­ed in false ego and self-​deception, become “com­fort­able” over time. Our com­fort zones have walls and bars. The iron ball that slows us down is self-​shackled.

“Just get over it” can be expe­ri­enced as incom­pas­sion­ate sham­ing or it can be heard as the sug­ges­tion that “You have the pow­er to make this bet­ter, and it’s about time that you did.”

Let’s wrap this up with anoth­er Eagles’ lyric:

Well I know it was­n’t you who held me down.
Heaven knows it was­n’t you who set me free.
So often times it hap­pens that we live our lives in chains,
And we nev­er even know we have the key. ³ 

 

¹ Get Over It by the Eagles on the album Hell Freezes Over (1994). The song is about Don Henley’s frus­tra­tion and con­tempt for oth­ers (such as TV talk show guests) blam­ing their fail­ures, men­tal break­downs, and finan­cial prob­lems on those who he feels don’t deserve it, then believ­ing that the world owes them a favor.

² Gee, Officer Krupke is a com­e­dy num­ber from the 1961 motion pic­ture West Side Story. The song was com­posed by Stephen Sondheim (lyrics) and Leonard Bernstein (music).

³ Already Gone is a song record­ed by the American rock band Eagles for their 1974 album On the Border. It was writ­ten by Jack Tempchin and Robb Strandlund