Getting Over The Past

"We fall down, but we get up...for a saint is just a sinner who fell down, and got up..." Donnie McClurkin

Before I start, I just want to give Pastor Donnie McClurkin a big shout out. When that song first came out, my mother used to play the thing until I was sick of it, but after giving it a listen, that became my song too. See, sometimes, it takes going through some things, some things that you have no control over, in order for you to look at life through clear eyes.

I remember once hearing someone say that the key to life is studying your past, realizing where you went wrong and never making those mistakes again. For a long time, the past was important to me, whether it was not repeating it, learning from it or what have you, however, as I've gotten older, as I've seen the world change around me, I've realized that the past is nothing but...well, the past. Too often, we as people focus on things that we have no control over. The past has nothing to offer you but memories. Sometimes those memories are good and sometimes they are bad, but that's really all we should use the past for. People always talk about the lessons that the past can teach you, however, sometimes it's necessary to try past mistakes. What may have been a mistake back then doesn't necessarily have to be a mistake now. It could mean that you weren't ready for it back then, but now if given a second try, things could work out differently. Too often people want to do the exact opposite of what was in their past rather than tweaking things and making subtle changes. Drastic changes RARELY if ever work in life, you learn more from repeated failure than you do from radical change.

Life happens in two stages. The past and the future. The present is just the timeline that divides the two. Far too often we spend more time looking behind us and worrying about what's going on back there than looking forward to see where we going. Think about it, even when you are driving, you spend more time looking in your mirrors and checking your blindspots than you do looking at the road ahead of you. Unless you are backing out, whatever you see in the rearview can't help you, it's time we as a people spend more time looking forward and reacting accordingly to life as it comes to us rather than trying to figure out what went wrong behind us. You'll be far more effective that way.