You Don't Have to Look Back

Writers have long enjoyed dividing the world into opposing groups, drawing a distinction on what separates us.

Samuel Johnson: “the world is a grand staircase, some going up, some going down.”

Chamfort: “those with more dinners than appetite, and those with more appetite than dinners.”

La Bruyère: “those who suffer from lack of solitude, and those who suffer from lack of company.”

Woody Allen: “The world is divided into good people and bad people. The good ones sleep better, but the bad ones seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.”

Modern academia also tries its hand at this too, categorizing us as introverts or extroverts, labels that often lack the poetic flair of these older distinctions. These distinctions tap into something fundamental about human nature: the tension between contrasting groups that frames our understanding of the world and our place in it.

Here is my contribution to this long tradition of dividing groups:

The People Who Look Back and The People Who Do Not Look Back

A Culture of Looking Back

Today, we’re told to look back, to dig up old stories as a way to explain who we are. Therapy, now as much a part of culture as any modern ritual, tells us that looking back is essential for growth, for fixing what’s broken, for finding some kind of meaning. The thinking goes like this: look back, process the past, and maybe it’ll free you from patterns or biases or buried pain that would otherwise hold you back.

@betwixt.app

Do you really know yourself? Most of us don’t. Here’s one way to start building genuine self-awareness. Ref: “Insight” by Dr. Tasha Euris... See more

Still, not everyone follows the current trend of looking back. You’ll sometimes meet people who tell you it’s better to keep moving forward. These are often people who are successful and somehow always in motion…

The entertainer Pitbull

And when you look at ancient texts, there’s a similar theme: not looking back is the preferred choice. Deep introspection that we are told to do today just doesn’t show up anywhere in ancient texts.

Ancient Warnings of Looking Back

In fact, ancient literature offers clear warnings against looking back. Figures like Orpheus and Lot’s wife serve as cautionary examples: Orpheus, forbidden to look back as he leads Eurydice from the underworld, turns around and loses her forever.

Lot’s wife, fleeing her city’s destruction, glances back and is turned into a pillar of salt, symbolizing the peril of dwelling on the past.

In the New Testament, Jesus emphasizes forward focus: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

For Stoics excessive retrospection was seen as a distraction, even a risk, to one’s progress and purpose. Seneca cautioned against grieving a death for very long and inn Letter 78, he writes about dragging up old sufferings:

This ancient caution against looking back aligns with what modern psychology now recognizes: excessive rumination can increase stress and anxiety, trapping individuals in cycles of regret that inhibit progress.

@dralexgeorge

Beware of rumination! This is a lesson from my own therapy #therapy #mentalhealth #mentalfitness #lifecoach

Some modern scholars try to shoe-horn modern psychology into ancient literature. Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey doesn’t mention the subconscious explicitly, but this respected scholar argues that Homeric characters externalize their impulses by attributing them to gods, reflecting an early attempt to explain irrational behavior without an internal psychological framework. His book tries to demonstrate how ancient Greeks made sense of intense emotions and urges as external, divine influences, which, in Dodds’ view, aligns loosely with our understanding of unconscious forces. It’s an interesting argument. But this is all speculation. Trying to tie back modern practices onto ancient people.

Therapy and Introspection: A Cultural Experiment

Therapy and deep introspection are new enough that we don’t fully understand their long-term impact on personal resilience or society’s mindset. In many ways, we’re experimenting with introspection as a tool, one that’s untested compared to the ancient preference for forward-focused living.

It was only in the late 20th century that self-help books and psychology-oriented media were popularizing introspection as a route to happiness and healing. It started showing up in popular media like The Sopranos where the show highlights therapy as experimental, a new kind of medical intervention that’s still figuring itself out. Tony’s sessions with Melfi capture this, sometimes they hit a breakthrough, like his panic attacks linked to childhood trauma, but just as often they go nowhere.

The show contrasts Melfi’s skill with other therapists, like Janice’s new-age-y Sandy, to highlight therapy’s mixed bag of approaches and results. Therapy here isn’t a fixed science; it’s new and a shifting experiment where outcomes vary as wildly as the methods.

Therapy has since expanded beyond mental health treatment into a mainstream tool for self-discovery, guiding people to examine past relationships and childhood traumas. Today, it’s celebrated as essential, based on the widespread belief that healing and self-growth require looking back.

Should You Look Back?

So, should you look back? Well it’s an option for you. That’s what a lot of modern life is about, we’re testing things out. Especially in America where new things are thrown at you all the time.

Some of modern life may eventually pass the Lindy filter, but others will probably not. SSRIs get you to the same place as exercise but without the side effects.

There is some evidence managed introspection, as seen in therapeutic contexts, can help people understand emotional triggers and patterns, forming a foundation for personal growth.

But who knows? There could be strange side effects. It’s all very new.

But you don’t have to engage with it if you do not want to.

In This Newsletter

While the ancients didn’t use modern introspection or therapy, they practiced mental health techniques that remain relevant today:

1) Stoic Self-Reflection Routine: Ancient Stoics didn’t dig into emotional wounds or past traumas. Instead, self-reflection was a daily check on personal conduct: Did I live with courage? Did I act justly? Did I cause harm?

2) The Art of Forgetting: Controlled Amnesia for Peace: Forgetting, to the ancients, wasn’t careless neglect; it was controlled amnesia, a deliberate act to prioritize mental peace.

3) Post-Traumatic Growth: People who experience major life crises often report post-traumatic stress. However, the literature suggests that traumatic experiences can also be catalysts for positive change.

Self-Reflection The Stoic Way

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