As I sat in the car crying to my dad about  how horrible I did on my  math final, I came to the idea that I only had 2 choices. I could either sit in that car for a couple more hours to cry, or I could accept what I had gotten and move forward. We all  experience misfortune every once in a while of our lives, and the hardest part is moving on.   People like Siddhartha, the seven samurais, and the girl who fell from the sky  all went through great misfortunes but still strived and learned to keep going. 

In the book “Siddhartha”, Siddhartha has an encounter with the river where he then learns that understanding your past is necessary but it does not mean your future is set. This encouraged him to move forward with looking for enlightenment. When you think about it, there is like a bridge between the past and future. We have the option to cross over that bridge and live in the present or we can stay in the past and dwell over it. Like Siddhartha, we should all learn to cross that bridge.  After he acknowledged and learned from his mistakes, Siddhartha  came to a conclusion  that you will get nowhere in life with experience and wander.  

Throughout the movie “Seven Samurai”, there were many experiences of the  loss of loved ones. For example Kikuchiyo’s pride took the best of him which drove him to leave his post and steal a gun from the bandits. This decision caused great conflict, because the bandits decided to attack. Since Kikuchiyo had left his post, the farmers there had to fight the bandits themselves. This resulted in the death  of a beloved farmer. After the fight Kikuchiyo felt guilt and shame, he stayed outside where the former  farmers and samurais had been buried and mourned. However, after that night of mourning , he got up and fought the next day. Despite what had happened and the guilt he had been feeling, he knew all he could do was learn from it and keep fighting. He fought with passion and never once looked back. 

In addition, the podcast of “The Girl Who Fell From The Sky”, was about a girl  who had survived a plane crash. Not only was strong enough to survive the crash itself but she was also strong enough to keep fighting for survival and finding safety.  The girl had experienced many obstacles such as losing her mom and all the physical injuries she had to endure.  Regardless of all the pain and suffering she had gone through, the girl made the choice to keep going forward through that forest until she found safety. If she had let the past get the best of her, she would have never been able to make it out of that forest. She never once gave up, but instead looked to the future. 

In conclusion,  we all have an X amount of time to live, would you rather revisit the past more than enjoying life right now? That could be a set up for a bigger number of regrets. Is that really what you want?  Many of us like Siddhartha, the seven samurai, and the girl who fell from the sky are faced with a difficult decision of moving forward or dwelling on the past.  The answer is simple, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” .  This means that you should not forget the past but you should not live in either. You must learn and understand from your past and take what you learned as you move forward. Live in the present and look to the future.