Hi Gillian,
We tend too often to gather stuff, I'm guilty. But I try and sort things and enjoy doing it; I put the music on and start looking around for useless stored stuff. Sometimes I also have meetings like that of yours, past calling. "Looking back into the past", hard trip most of the times that leads to catharsis not whithout a fee.
I don't like travels to past, nothing alive is there, nothing that exists now. But it keeps calling and holding out its hands to stretch you by its side. When horrible things happend to you, your wounds or that of your beloved ones remain to hold you on that past from wich you cannot scape.
It would be more the same to hold on the beautiful marvellous momments that we lived, we would get trapped by the sirens sweet singing.
Like backpacks we carry our past and all the things we gather, the more we hold the more heavyly we move.
As time goes by I'm realizing that gathering stuff has no sense but that of its use. It's obvious and so I will skip about being wise and foresighted. The "now" that we are loosing as we're talking or as I'm writing is the "most" we can have, shouldn't we waste too much time out of that... maybe art can help dealing on this, sometimes. Music helps me out.
"Life itself it's the ultimate adventure"_GP