Remembering Forwards: Healing the Hauntings of the Past

This chapter introduces the notion of remembering forwards, which is contrasted with remembering backwards. Hauntings reside in the burden of past memories, which get reproduced in the process of remembering backwards. This chapter identifies what it calls the burden of the future, namely the problem of how to live together in a shared future despite haunted memories. This chapter suggests that release from these hauntings is found in the idea of remembering forwards. The chapter further argues that these enduring divided memories need to be reimagined by the application of truth, tolerance, togetherness, transformation and trajectory. It is through remembering forwards with these five virtues that people in societies emerging out of conflict can manage the burden of the future, and thus inherit a shared society despite their divided pasts and live in tolerance in the midst of haunting memories. The healing of haunted memories lies in this new approach to remembering.