It’s not your past that makes you who you are. It’s how you interpret your past. If you look at negative past experiences as examples of how NOT to be — and (by implication) indicators of how best to be –then you have made your bad experiences work for you. If you look at your past negative experiences as an excuse to obtain sympathy and various special favors from others, then you have cheated yourself out of genuine adulthood. If you think that your future must be negative because your past was painful, you’re profoundly wrong. The future is what you make it. Bad experiences can point the way to the truth just as well as good ones.