Divorce Blog

Title: Never Look Back

The best advice I’ve ever heard was from a most unlikely source. It was given by a father to his son when asked, “Dad, how come you never complain?”

The father was a Holocaust survivor who lost his whole family to the Nazis. When the war ended, he was thrown into a cargo boat and eventually landed in the Bronx unable to speak English, without any money, no education, and a stranger to the land and it’s people. He began sewing and selling shirts in a Harlem factory. A cardboard box was his storefront. He did this until he’d saved up enough money for the first and last months rent for the smallest and stinkiest store in New York City next to a chicken market that wreaked of stale blood on one side that blended with the smells of deep-fried pig intestines on the other.

His answer to his son’s question was, “Martin, the Nazis took five years from my life. I

won’t give them one minute more. Martin, never look back; always move forward.” From then on, when Martin was tempted to look back on all of the miserable things of his past, he remembered what his wise father told him, and said, “Stop. Think. What’s the next positive thing I can do?”

This lesson became my standard for the rest of my life after a divorce from a marriage of 22 years and four children. The anger, the feeling of being victimized, and the hatred consumed me until I felt like a dark hole hanging on the edge of oblivion. I went into therapy hoping it would help me figure it all out. After three years of dumping out every terrible experience I could think of, I was no better off. I had become a “therapy paralytic,” a person who, after years of psychotherapy that did nothing but make me look backwards to things that could never be changed. Sure, it gave me a little insight into who I was, and the picture wasn’t pretty. Therapy sessions remained in my thoughts and grew like lazy muscles given a lot of exercise. In the process, my anger and hatred seemed to grow toward the man who dumped his wife and special needs children because that’s all I talked about. And then I found Marty’s story.

I’m talking about Martin Nemko, one of the nation’s most sought after experts in education and employment. He finishes this story in his own words.

“My father’s approach—constantly substituting forward movements for backward

thoughts—made his painful bad memories an ever smaller part of his consciousness. It’s hard to be thinking back to the Holocaust when your life is filled with thoughts about upcoming work, relationships, hobbies, and fun. I’ve read, listened to, and watched many interviews of highly successful people. The vast majority of them minimize the impact of the bad in their past.

They’re always saying things like, “I guess there probably was some racism but I just didn’t focus on that.” I’ve recently added a phrase to my father’s dictum: “Don’t look sideways.”

I know people who don’t live in the past but are saddled with such thoughts as, “I’ll never be as successful as my brother.” Or “I feel so bad that my fellow classmates are all investment bankers, lawyers and the like, with nice houses and nice cars, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.” That sideways thinking is no more productive than looking backward. Don’t compare yourself with anyone or societal norms. Simply ask yourself, “What is the next positive step I can take?”

So, never look back; never look sideways; always move forward. I can offer you no better advice.