Amanda Mammana, AGT, and owning the past

I really like the young woman in this America's Got Talent video. She'd had a hard time, somewhat linked to her speech impediment, but she 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, such as removing the suffering, because that's what made so much of you.

See this quote by Rumi.

"The cure for the pain is in 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 point of loving themselves; worse still, that can make having empathy for others hard too.

People talk about depression being the product of dwelling on the past, and that anxiety 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 and 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" suggests.