When I was young and single, I briefly dated a guy who insisted he had no past. It is possible, he would assert over a bottle of wine in my living room, to become someone who is completely unburdened by what has happened before. According to him, a graduate student in philosophy, we should all only exist in the present.

At the time, I was teaching courses on nonfiction writing at a fairly large university, and I spent a significant amount of time discussing the exact opposite with colleagues and students alike: There was something important about grappling with our messy and imperfect pasts. “We are creatures of context,” I wrote in my journal at the time. “To exist outside of the happenings and people who defined the parameters of existence for us is impossible.”

More specifically, for

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