Where the Past No Longer Serves

It's been an interesting couple weeks.

First, to report back on the reflection I was going to try during Lent: that was a total bust.  In fact, not only have I been less reflective, I've been much more irritable than usual.  I'm not sure if the initial reflection opened up Pandora's Box or there have been other things going on but, suffice to say, I've been concerned about this latest downturn in my own world view.

What is happening?

In part, I feel like there's some something brewing in the ether.  My annoyance is a symptom of perhaps the realization of something larger going on.  I generally believe this to be true: when I'm feeling really off-kilter, I start looking around to figure out what the pressure points are.  When I did this, I began to see, left and right, things changing in big ways.  People I have known for years just dropping out of sight.  People (and places) I once counted on suddenly folding or changing into things I no longer knew.  Roads closed where once they had been so unapologetically open.  Shifting sands.

Of course, that's the normal course of things.  I can't begrudge anyone or anything that.  But what I also realized was how sad I felt about it.  Truly sad. And my own ignorance or acknowledgement of that feeling, I do begrudge myself.  How could I have not listened to that al all?  One day in the shower, I found myself actually pining for what seemed like older, better days...before things had been scattered about.  Before people changed forever.  Before doors closed.

It was that feeling of loss that was actually causing the irritability.  Unaware, I was living in the past but dealing with the present.  Once I realized this and started trying to bring myself back into the present, I wish I could say I felt easier.  I did not.  I felt the ache of having to let go of the hope we could ever go back there again.  We cannot.  Back there is gone.  And when I knew I was starting to pull out of the initial pangs of letting go, righting my vision forward, I saw a path illuminated letting me know how to go.  What I also saw was how not perfect "back there" was.  How much of not great was contained there, softened in my own memories to be a gauzy time of only laughter and fulfillment.  I know for a fact that wasn't true.  Isn't it funny how the pressures of today make you want to believe that with all your heart?  Once I settled that score in my head, a weight on my chest lifted.  We can't go back but why would we want to?

I'd also like to say that I wished that path forward to be easier.  We have a funny way of assuming that once a path has made itself known, it becomes easier to traverse.  No.  What I saw was a path but not a road.  I could see the way but it still remains to be built.  And even then I could only see it to the horizon and not beyond.  This is a continuous cycle.  Maybe one I haven't paid enough attention to cultivating continuously in the past.  In looking backwards, I stopped building, developing, creating.  And so I'm back to some dirt and a plan.  In some ways, that's so frustrating.  In other ways, it's nothing but hope and light.

The last year feels like a bizarre cautionary love-letter to myself.  "This is what happens," it starts, "when you check out for awhile.  Things change and you don't notice it...until you go to find them and they're gone."

"Pay more attention," it warns.  "Enjoy today.  Tomorrow will offer that same chance then."

"Okay, I'm learning," I say back, making a swirl in the dirt path of today, planning how to cut it in a way that serves me anew.  At least until tomorrow.