Michael Holme
Amanda Mammana, AGT, and owning the past
I really like the young woman in this America's Got Talent video. She had had a hard time, somewhat linked to her speech impediment, and then got through it.
I still maintain that when you exit your "Hell on Earth", and become the genuine you (and it is Hell to not be you), then you totally understand that you wouldn't want to change any of your past, for example, removing the suffering. That's what made so much of you.
See this quote by Rumi.
"The cure for the pain is the pain."
We all have different paths and challenges. I think taking life one day at a time matters. By becoming ourselves, we start loving ourselves. It can be really cruel, because many never get to that loving point; worse still, that makes feeling empathy for others, hard as well.
People talk about anxiety being the product of dwelling on the past, and that depression is a worry about the future. I think an achievement of self-love negates the past's influence, and it puts you in a much stronger emotional position, to tackle challenging unpredictable things, in the future.
To love is living in the now, as we're often told to do, and with an inner love, like Jesus' "the Kingdom of Heaven is within"?