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Today's
Meditation:
I
used to be a lot different than I am now. And I can
honestly say that the person I was five years ago definitely
wasn't the same person I was fifteen years ago. I
live, I learn, I change. And as I go on living, I
somehow keep on forgetting lessons that I learned before,
and I find that I have to make some of the same mistakes,
sometimes worse and sometimes not as bad as before, just to
relearn lessons that I've already "learned."
How
annoying is that?
If
we can keep in our minds the people that we were years ago,
we'll have a much better chance of keeping in mind those
lessons that were so important to us. We learn those
lessons supposedly so that we won't have to repeat the same
mistakes over and over, but guess what? If we forget
who we were, we'll forget the lessons that we learned.
If we don't keep in mind the persons that we've been, then
we won't ever have the benefit of that person's knowledge.
When
I look back on years gone by in my life, there's plenty for
me to be embarrassed about. I made plenty of mistakes
that hurt other people or that were just ridiculous.
But if I reject who I was and never revisit my past, those
lessons run the risk of being buried in my used-to-be, and
they become useless in my here-and-now. Sometimes I
think about the past on purpose, kind of to try to show some
sympathy to the person I used to be-- it does help me now--
and kind of to remind myself of all that I have to be
grateful for in my life today.
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