The future...head for it

WARNING: Trite expressions used throughout this post.

There's a temptation, when things aren't working out the way we want, to look at the past and remember it in a positive light...you know, through rose-colored glasses.

It's nice to have memories like that at times. I can remember a job I had or the people I knew and think of good times. I can remember great times my family and I experienced together. It's not so nice when they get in the way of moving forward.

If you take your positive past experiences, wrap your arms around them, wallow around in the mud with them, and spend more than a passing amount of time with them, then they're not helpful.

As we know, as we've heard, as we've said, time waits for no one. We can't be wasting what time we have on this earth dreaming about the past. We can look to the past on occasion because it's pleasant and because it can help guide our paths forward. We can appreciate the past for how it has shaped us, but then we have to put it back in it's appropriate spot in our lives.

The future is now. We need to live our lives now and not hold onto the past. It just doesn't do us any good. "Carpe' diem", sieze the day: for a just cause, for the ones around us, for ourselves. This is the way we need to live.