If you’re anything like me, this movie is the first thing you thought of when you read this title. Honestly though it’s such a great slogan, this movie made me cry (I cry at everything) and this slogan still helps lead me through life. (Meet the Robinsons incase you were wondering what movie this is from).

Any who, the fact is, the past is a haunting thing, and if you don’t learn to let go of it, there’s no way you can enjoy the future. If there’s one post I’ve been excited to write, it’s this one. In my opinion, this is a HUGE part of being happy. This is honest to goodness one of the largest keys to happiness there is, because you can’t be happy if you hold grudges.

So on that note it’s time for a personal anecdote! So literally a year ago, I was but a wee senior in high school, totally a different person than I am today, and one of my beat friends broke my heart in half. You know how the song “i hate u i love u” says ‘friends can break your heart too’? Well that lyric never meant anything to me until I had my best friend in the world hurt more more than any boy ever has. Point is, I lost someone who had been there in my life since kindergarten. Sometimes you give your all to someone and they turn out to be pretty sucky, or they change in someway. For a couple months I wondered how I was ever supposed to let someone in like that again. I wondered how my trust in my friends could ever be restored after what happened to me. It took me a couple months, but I did eventually move on.

The thing that I finally came to realize was, if I let that one person ruin my whole outlook on humanity, I’d have a very sad life. You just can’t let a past event control you and your life like that. I can nearly assure you that every human being in the world has been hurt before by someone they thought would never do that to them. It sucks and its very sad, but it’s life.

So once we understand that life sucks sometimes, we can focus on dealing with it. The best way to move forward is to let go of bad memories of the past. I got over my friend hurting me by taking her out of my life completely. It’s not fun to say goodbye to someone who meant the world to you, but sometimes you have to put yourself first. Delete them on social media, delete their number, and just be done. They’ll be mad and they’ll call you petty (I was called petty for doing it so I know). But there was a saying I heard when I was making the decision of how to handle people who hurt me.

It’s a very straight forward quote, and it really speaks the truth. It’s not petty to let go of the past, quite the contrary, it’s a lost less mature to hang onto it and hold grudges. Even if it’s an event where someone did mean to hurt you, for example if something bad in your life happened, someone passed away or got hurt or something sad happened. It’s not easy, and I’m not saying to forget someone who passed away, I’m just saying happiness starts with acceptance of what you can’t change. When you learn to accept what you have in front of you and work with it, you’ll be better for it.

The moral of the story is, life is a beautiful thing, but sometimes, it will break you down. Life will throw so much at you that you might even find yourself wondering if it’s worth it to go on, and it’s really really sad. But if there’s one true key to happiness, it’s working on letting go of your past anger and sadness. You can’t find new happiness without letting go of old pain. It’s challenging, but happiness is always worth it in the end.