It's important to honor and acknowledge your past, to tease lessons from the stories that make you, you. But at some point the past becomes a crutch, something to fall back on when you're uncomfortable in the present or fearful of the future.
We saw played out on the national stage how seductive it is to believe our own fabrications about the way it is, and we saw the prices we'll pay as a result of our unwillingness to look beyond what we think we already know.