It all starts with Anakin, the Boy Wonder of his time. It’s less about science fiction and more about something so many of us have trouble addressing: emotions.

Embarking on a new path requires ending an old walk, and new birth always involves a death of some sort. New beginnings can’t really happen until we’ve genuinely parted company with old ways.

I recently wrote about how our emotions can become tangled up with possessions and artifacts that represent past experiences and relationships; how our homes gradually fill up with ‘stuff’ — literal and metaphorical — that blocks us from moving on. But how do we actually go about clearing the clutter?

Certain dates and the events that took place on them have resonance and meaning for us; they shape our sense of who we are, individually and collectively. TV schedulers like to run documentaries on the anniversary of important events, reflecting on the experiences of those involved with the benefit of hindsight, and usually ending by asking how far we’ve come and what we’ve learned. Could this be a useful exercise for us as individuals too?

Letting go of objects associated with people we’ve lost or relationships that haven’t worked out can feel like an act of betrayal, or a compounding of the loss that has already happened. By unraveling the emotions associated with those objects, and the memories (good and bad) wrapped up in them, we can find ways of moving on through the grieving process towards the next phase of our lives.

The first reason I wrote a book was that I wanted what everyone wants, to connect to others in some meaningful way when I could not bear to do so directly.

What can we learn about ourselves, and possibly our future, from contemplating the Mayan civilization? The beliefs and values that our society holds influence the way we live, our evolutionary strengths and weaknesses, and the shape of our fate. If we ask ourselves the right questions, we can learn from history how to confront life’s challenges wisely.