There is a book which begins with the line: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”*

Expanding this idea has helped me to understand my relationship with the past, particularly when I have struggled with feelings of regret or sadness at moving on from important people or places in my life.**

By imaging the past as another country I once lived in, it becomes easier to leave behind. We have all come from the Country of What Has Been, but we can never go back. We can only remember what it was like and be thankful for what we have learned there.

There are other countries we can not reach: the Countries of the Could Have Been, Would Have Been and Should Have Been. These are places we can only visit in our dreams or nightmares.

The Country of What Will Still Be pulls us towards it, but is rarely as we imagined it, because we often confuse it with a mirage: the Country of What We Expect. This is not the same as the Country of What We Hope For, which is worth looking for. It can be used as a compass bearing that will help you find your way around your true home, the Country of the Here and Now.

* The book is The Go Between by LP Hartley.

** The Portugese word saudade describes the complex feeling of losing something or someone we long for but might never regain.