by Demola Rewaju

Finally, I must warn you about those people who would forever seek to tie you to your past. Painfully, family and old friends are the two sections of associations that always try to do this.

In one of the books I’m writing for publication later this year I recount a story I heard of a famous painting that hung in the entrance hallway of a building for several years but nobody took notice of it until the mistress of the house decided to bring it down and take it for cleaning.

The cleaner was a professional who knew what kind of frame would fit the picture perfectly so he removed the old one which had borders in a colour that clashed with the colours in the work and put one that had no visible borders, just edges and a hook at the back. Once hung back in the walkway, every guest to the house remarked on how beautiful a painting it was.

When the owner of the house got tired of explaining that the picture had always been in that hallway, he started to enjoy the compliments that people paid to him on account of the painting without explaining any more. It’s not what you have or have not, it’s how you present yourself or that detail about you that matters. Reframing your past means packaging your past in such a way that the people you meet know the truth about you but understand that you’ve moved learnt from that past and moved on from it.

Many people go through life with a chip on their shoulder. Most people have one thing or the other about them that pulls them back and usually, it has to do with a grave error they have committed but which nevertheless cannot hold them back except they empower it to do so. Keeping things in the dark may work in the short term but on the long run, you only give it more power to become the defining point of your life.

The first thing to do with your past mistakes is to forgive yourself of it. if you have to take some time away to learn the lessons from your past, do it. Only when you do that can you successfully put another frame around the picture and turn it to something people admire about you. Say you got pregnant a couple of times and had to abort them. This isn’t something you want to hide from your future hubby. Once you’ve learnt the lessons, bring it up in conversation with him but do not present yourself as a victim or exhibit bitterness about the guys who impregnated you and refused to accept responsibility. Paint a picture of a lady who has gotten over it and learnt from her experience. How you present yourself to the world matters a lot but more important is how you see yourself.

If you don’t believe it in your heart however, you shouldn’t say it with your mouth or misrepresent yourself. Who you are, is who you are but it isn’t always how the world sees you. Present yourself as a victim and you will be accepted and treated as one. Finally, I must warn you about those people who would forever seek to tie you to your past.

Painfully, family and old friends are the two sections of associations that always try to do this. Family know you better than anyone else and some will forever see you in the light of your past errors. Fighting about this means you still see yourself in a wrong way. dealing with it and showing evidence of who you now are is a more effective way of getting through life.

That’s one of the secrets of Joseph.

As a teenager, he had two dreams and he blurted them out to his brothers and family on both occasions. His brothers hated him for this and sold him into slavery. He managed to end up as the ruler of Egypt, subject only to the Pharaoh. When his brothers appeared to buy food during a famine, Joseph hid himself from them on many occasions until he finally admitted to them that he was their brother.

The man who had foolishly told them of his dream had now become a man capable of hiding his identity through several meetings: he had reinvented himself. His brothers saw this and so great was their fear of him henceforth that after the death of their father Jacob, they made him promise to be fair to them and not exact revenge: they could see that not only was he in power, he knew how to wield it. He could successfully hide a scheme for years if need be. No longer the bumbling teenager they had known in the past. And Joseph knew how to re-frame his past. He never saw himself as a victim, only as one whom destiny had chosen to be a forerunner of his family to Egypt.

You’re not a victim even if you’ve been defeated before. You are one person who has learnt the positive lessons in a negative way but then, it depends on how you see yourself

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