Years ago, I penned a weekly column for The Tahlequah Daily Press called Looking Back. It was stories my mother told me of her childhood and looking back at a way of life that existed in the early twentieth century. It is with somewhat a shock that I realize, if I wanted, I could pen another Looking Back featuring my own childhood in the 1940s and 1950s. How’d that happen, anyway? Can it be true? But yes, I fear so. I am now a relic of a bygone age. However, I refuse to sit on the shelf and gather dust.
As I grow older, I do look back a lot. That may be good sometimes, but sometimes it’s not. There’s a strange thing about looking back. I’ve found my vision is not 20/20. Hard times lose their sharp edges and appear a lot more pleasant than they were. Mistakes are magnified and present their leering faces as if taunting me to go back and change them if I can. It is sometimes difficult to come to terms with the fact that the past is just that–it’s over. What do I have left? Why, the present, of course, and the opportunity-laden future.
The most important part of the good old days was the people. That’s true about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Accomplishments fizzle, dreams evaporate, riches come and go, mistakes are made and will continue to be made just, hopefully, not the same ones. But, the people in my life are far more important than dreams whether those dreams fade or are realized.
Looking back at past times or looking inward and seeing only myself are traps of getting older. This doesn’t encourage growth, but stagnation. The past is there to remember the good things, the people, the joys, and treasure them but the rest should be discarded. The past can be a chain and who wants to drag around a heavy weight of things that cannot be changed? Not I. So, I step forward into the future, grateful for the past, but determined not to become a dust-covered relic!
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