Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Moving On Can Be The Damnedest Thing To Do

 

Jack 

Work with me on this one. Let’s say you love summer, and spend your time counting the days until the pool opens, the khaki shorts can be brought out from storage, and the good old A/C unit can get cranked up again. The trips to the beach with friends and family, the late setting sun, it all just gets your heart pumping with passion. The memories of great times seem to follow you around like your shadow at dusk. Is there anything wrong with your passion for summer? Of course not, she’s a beautiful season worthy of your undying love. But, if you are all too often caught up in missing summer, are you really able to truly appreciate winter? If you spend your time in the now frustrated about what you don’t have, how possible is it to honestly, and sincerely be appreciative for what you do have? Few dispute gratitude has its way of making us all feel better. So then why is it so hard to let go sometimes?

I try to live in the moment. Ask close family of mine, and I’m sure they’d tell you I live in the moment a little too much for comfort. Retirement account? That’ll be the day. Annual doctor visits when I’m not sick? Forget it. I pretty much take each day as if it could be my last, and try my hardest to accomplish something. God forbid my last day on earth I’m found passed out in a Snuggie on my couch watching Oprah. That’s not cool. I hope to die as I lived, to leave it on the field as they say.

Living in the moment is great, but, from time to time, I find myself drifting back to the past. Oh the past, don’t we all have a way of romanticizing the deliciously good times, and forgetting the sour times all together? I know I do it, if you ask me about someone I couldn’t stand ten years ago, I’d probably call them a great human being. Ask me about a mediocre business venture in 2005, and I’d tell you it was the best choice I’d ever made to be involved in it. Maybe, just maybe, that’s why I get so caught up in the past from time to time. I’m always thinking ahead, yet sometimes I just can’t let go of things in the past.

Moving on with life is most difficult when dependency is involved. Emotional, physical, monetary, it all seems to ply us together to moments that are anything but here forever. In the past seven months I’ve made a lot of changes in my life, and I’m betting you have too. Looking back on this time, many things were very easy to let go of, while a few have been much harder. Through prayer, and a few friendly consultations over imported pints of stout, I’ve learned the best really is yet to come, if I can just open my eyes and see it in front of me.

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