We all have it. Every human being has it. Many of us choose not to think about it, many choose to live in it- our past.
Life is a collaboration of events, opportunities, and lessons measured on a timeline; every decision you've ever made affected your timeline. Some of those decisions landed you in the greatest possible outcome ever and you thank your lucky stars for that chance, some of those decisions make you want to crawl into a hole and go into hibernation (like, why on Earth did I waste so many years with that guy?!), but alas, they were learning experiences and made you who you are today. No struggle is too big or too small to get hung up on, we all have little nicks that hurt.
The idea of the timeline is to move forward, and time spent idling over a smudge on your timeline means the gift of the present is also effected by that smudge. So not only did a mistake blemish your past, it's controlling your present, too! Double whammy. Ouch.
But we're not down there, far down in the timeline, immersing in the past... we're up here! Hello! Right here. Hi:)
For the past several months, I've been going through slumps where I allow my past to dictate my present; mistakes that I made, paths I took, decisions I made, I've been going through the
where would I be now if I did this differently? or
who would I be today had I not chosen to do that? kind of questions
. And, I don't know about you, but those
what if questions are exhausting. I'm tired.
I have struggled to bury the past and to just forget about all my missteps and live in the now, but it's hard, I have to constantly remind myself that I'm perfectly imperfect and mistakes are a-okay and I am a human being. It's difficult to get out of those slumps and live completely in the present sometimes.
But today it happened, I found the way out for good, and I'll never turn back.
I was in the Panera Bread parking lot this gorgeous and sunny Saturday afternoon. That's when it happened. An epiphany. My epiphany.
