I saw a poster this week that pictured a guy standing in a field with the outline of a city in the distance. “The world you grew up in,” it said, “doesn’t exist any more.”
“You got that right!” I said right out loud as I read those words. Heck, the worlds we lived in three weeks ago have vanished, never mind the worlds of our childhood. And you know what? As much as we might want them to, they’re never coming back.
You know what else? We get to take all the good parts of our former worlds with us, and all the things we learned from the parts that weren’t so good. They’re all right here, inside us, and nothing and no one can take them away. Every experience we’ve ever had is an integral part of who we are now.
I heard a story once where a little girl asked her grandmother, “Grandma, is everybody like this?”
“Like what?” asked the grandmother.
“Bigger on the inside than on the outside,” the little girl said.
That’s a pretty cool thing for a little kid to realize. Inside, we’re as big as all our memories and imaginings put together. All the people who have touched our lives are there, all the places we’ve been, all the things we’ve done, all the dreams we’ve dreamed.
And it took every one of those things to bring us exactly to where we are now, cruising down time’s river, seeing the sights, planning what we’ll make and do when we get to the next shore.
We can draw on all that we are to choose how we want to be as we go into the river’s next bend. We can see the parts that didn’t serve us, or others, well and drop them in the waters. We can let the parts that brought us joy and love and satisfaction serve as our compass when the river offers us choices between this way or that.
We can remind ourselves to be calm when the waters get rough, knowing we’ve come through storms before. We know how to keep faith when darkness falls, knowing that light will follow.
There’s no reason to fear that we might be lost, because we’re always right here, breathing in the ever-changing now as it slides by.
Yesterdays go where yesterdays go, and we keep them inside us forever.
So be at peace. Be here. And let yourself appreciate the ride
Warmly,
Susan