What unexpectedly encountering the past, what does one say? Perhaps direct metaacknowledgement: "Hello, Past, I'm afraid I don't quite know what to say to you." Perhaps introduce to the future: "Past, this is Future. Future, this is Past. I'm sure you have lots of things in common that you'd love to talk about." And then they can go off together into another room, leaving one alone.

“How did it go?” does not ask “How will it go?”. It is either good or bad. It is not fair to it to assign optimism or pessimism to it. For the past is the past, the future is the future, and the burden of one should not fall upon the other.