"Things aren't what they used to be, and probably never were."
Past tense verbs are dangerous. (How's that for random??)
You know the kind I’m talking about…
I had.....
I went.....
I used to....
Quantum physics seems to suggest that we can go backwards and forwards in time, and that we can even be at multiple points in space-time simultaneously. But I don't need quantum physics for that, as I am quite good at living in the already-happened past, or in the future that I have planned out in my wild, sleep-deprived imagination. It's easy to get lost in thinking about the past--to go down the rabbit hole--and while it isn't necessarily bad to think about the past, I have to be careful. It's not so much the thinking about the past that is problematic, as is HOW we think about it. What we think about it. The significance we give it.
For most of my adult life, or at least the portion of my adult life in which I was conscious of such things, I have believed that people think about the past so much because we know it's the only thing we really "have." It's the only "proof" that any of this life that we've created actually happened in the first place. In the present moment, which alway seems to fly by at the speed of light right before our eyes, we are so pulled for attention that the "present" isn't even a real thing. Your daughter is trying to show you what she made at school while your son is chasing the dog through the house while you are attempting to cook spaghetti before rushing off to Wednesday night Bible study, and you're already mentally exhausted from a long day at work. It's like you're standing on the banks of a river watching the water flow by, non-stop, all day long for eternity. All a parent wants to do in these situations is press pause on life and just stop time from passing. Ask any parent whose last kid(s) is/are seniors in high school--they'll tell you this true.
As for the future...well, the flux capacitor is still just a movie gimmick...a joke that is "currently out of stock" on the O'Reilly Auto Parts website. (Part #121G, if you wanna check that out.) We can't go to the future yet. Not sure I'd want to....I mean, have you seen Back tot he Future, Part 2???? No thanks. We can dream about the future. We even think we can plan for it, but even this is false because the future never really arrives because once it does, it immediately passes into the past.
I taught my kids, and my students also, that you can't plan for the future--you can only plan a past to look back on. Make it a good past, because you are going to look back on it for years, and years, and years, and years. No action taken taken is without consequence, and it just might be that the only consequence is you having to look back and wonder what would have happened if you'd decided differently, but there is always a consequence.
So, about this past of mine/yours....
We romanticize the crap out of it don't we???
"When I was in school..."
"Back when I was in the military..."
"Back when I was a priest..."
"Back when I was a teacher..."
We are absolutely convinced that the best days of our lives are BEHIND US. And it is this mentality that scares the absolute living daylights out of me. I mean, am I to believe that I've already done all the good that I'm ever going to do?? God forbid. Sadly, I must admit I'm the world champion of this kind of thinking, and I must change it. I hate that I ever wasted time and energy being upset [read: "completely wrecked"] that this or that thing or time or place ended and is no more. I hate that I ever got to a place in life where I'd been "taken out" by the enemy with such a sly, simple tactic--making me think the best days of my life are behind me.
Remember in that movie A Night at the Museum, right before Robin Williams/Teddy Roosevelt turned back into a statue, and he was talking to Ben Stiller's character? Ben said "I have no idea what I'm gonna do tomorrow." And Robin Williams said "how exciting!" Do you feel truly excited about knowing that you have absolutely no idea what is going to happen tomorrow? I bet if you're honest, that notion scares you. It does me. But I'm learning to enjoy the not knowing. And with that comes less emphasis on the importance of what I've already done. At least I hope so. Into the light!
Have a good day.
