Watching this week’s BBC Spotlight programme, I quickly found myself encapsulated by a deep-seated frustration, one that bordered on disgust.

Spotlight’s guests consisted of Patricia McBride (commentator and former Victims’ Commissioner), Declan Kearney (Sinn Fein), Jim Allister (TUV), David Ford (Alliance) and Jeffrey Donaldson (DUP).

Among the questions posed to the panel were those concerning Britain’s possible exit from the European Union, MLA’s expenses and the upcoming centenary of 1916.

As with most of the discourse we have become accustomed to within Northern Irish politics, it was nearly impossible to discuss contemporary issues without the ‘the past’, and all its loaded and divisive questions over responsibility and reparation, predominating proceedings.

At times it was a constant squabble between the entrenched camps of nationalism and unionism.

On a broad level, my frustration centred on the questions; is this the best we can hope for? Is this our future?

Throughout Northern Ireland, our education system is suffering, as is Health and Social Care, not to mention the severe lack of jobs and high levels of social inequality that blights this generation.

Further afield, as is the case throughout the island of Ireland, we all have many friends and relatives in every corner of the world who long for the opportunities to return home. They long for life back in the city, the countryside, the green fields and the lakes.

Yet our political system, and its position of being deeply engrained in the antagonisms of the past, continually fails us time and time again.

The rhetoric of a better future for all of Northern Ireland is eternally constrained by the politics of the past.

More specifically, was the issue of commemoration, which has assumed a particularly prominent position during the Decade of Centenaries.

What struck me was the intransigence, particularly among the unionist panellists, to engage with the notion of participating in events commemorating the 1916 Rising.

While I completely understand that the Rising is not part of the historical narrative of Unionism, it was nevertheless an event that contributed to the particular circumstances in which we all find ourselves in today.

Our identity, whether we see ourselves as Catholic/Protestant, Nationalist/Unionist, Republican/Loyalist, Irish/British/Northern Irish, all, some, or perhaps even none of these, is profoundly shaped by the events at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Ulster Covenant, World War One, the Somme, the Rising, the Irish Revolution: they all contributed to who we are and where we ended up. In this context, a single event cannot be ascribed ‘their’ history, and hence, not ‘ours’.

It seems that the Decade of Centenaries has set the tone for commemorating our past.

2018/19 will see fifty years since the beginning of the Troubles. What then? Will every single event of the Troubles be commemorated during this fiftieth cycle according to the laws of ‘their history’ and ‘our history’?

Surely there is a better way our politicians can serve the people of Northern Ireland than to forever shining the spotlight on the past.