Ghost of my past

Today "Past" is being regarded as something unimportant. People float quotations which advise to avoid what happened, just focus on today and don't care about future because it is uncertain. But I regard 'past' a very important aspect of life. Reasons for this are as follows:

If we just avoid or forget what happened, how will we be able to learn from it? We will just be repeating our mistakes. This is basic defence which historians have used to justify importance of history. I too respect it. But I have one more point: We are product of our past. I am a product of my past. The only reason I don't have much close friends is because people are not interested in knowing my past. They just know a detached me, detached from what happened with me. They like to be friends with what I am today, without regard of what I was before. They make their opinion about me by how I "appear" today and not what I really am. Off course, my real personality can only be understood by my past.

Secondly, If we live for today only, and ignore future, we will only be ruining future. Maybe future is more important than today, and maybe we can only know about future through past. This point may appear very superficial for some, but well, I must admit that I believe, sometimes only analyzing past can make you understand what can happen in future.

Third reason, which perhaps applies to me only, is my imagination. My imaginations are full of memories about my past. So strong are my imaginations that I have started living in them and not in this world. They are more real to me than the world which appears in front of me. Sometimes, my dreams also show me what I might have forgotten. How can people know me without being introduced to my imaginations? Its not possible. And all my imaginations are nothing but creative mixtures of my past. When I say I live in my imaginations, it also goes with it that I live in my past memories and their mixtures. So without being introduced to my past, you cannot be introduced to my imaginations and so you cannot be introduced to me.

I must say, my past is a ghost for me, but this ghost is part of my existence.