Get Up, Again

What future does the past have? The question is not rhetorical. It’s at the core of the psychoanalytical movement . It fuels the zillion-dollar self-help industry. The past ought not to cloud your present , a guru like Eckhart Tolle, the prophet of the power of Now, may advise.

The media celeb Arianna Huffington gave different advice in her recent address to Sarah Lawrence College graduates , “Illumination — or wisdom — is precisely what we most need today,” she says, citing the 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus, who, long before the advent of Twitter, described opinion, science and wisdom as the three sources of knowledge.

“Part of wisdom is recognising that there is a purpose to our life that may not be immediately obvious as our life unfolds ,” Huffington added. “Things — especially the biggest heartbreaks — often make sense as we look back, not as we are experiencing them.” Analysing the failure of her first love affair, she concluded that “in life, the things that go wrong are often the very things that lead to other things going right”.

She left the man she deeply loved. And everything that happened thereafter — her children, her books, The Huffington Post, the mega-million deal with AOL, and the fact that she was talking to the students — was only because a man wouldn’t marry her! What she learnt from the story of her past was perseverance made the crucial difference between success and failure. “In the end, it’s how long we can keep going until success happens,” she said. “It’s getting up one more time than we fall down.”