Living Life Fully!

Thoughts about your past…
(Living life fully)

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Note: Surfing through my emails and the one below caught my attention. The message in it is exactly how I see and describe it. There is no reason to rewrite it, instead I page lifted the whole essay. Credit to the author!

“You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.” Augusten Burroughs

I’ve known plenty of people who are prisoners of their pasts. Some of them are still agonizing over a mistake that they made or some hurt that someone else did them. Others are in the “glory days” mode, thinking of some time in the past that was the “best time of their lives,” and that’s pretty much all they ever talk about. Others live in regret of an opportunity not taken, or one taken–taking that job that they’re still “stuck” in, when they should have bought a one-way ticket to Europe or South America or Asia.

But our past doesn’t imprison us–it simply can’t. It has no control over us at all, and no ability to control us. Rather, we keep ourselves stuck in the past with our own minds–we choose to think of our glory days instead of the people who are in our lives now; we choose to agonize over a mistake from ten or twenty years ago rather than appreciate the opportunities that are ours today; we choose to wish we were still with that one love we had rather than keeping an eye out for someone who may be even better.

Our past can be more than just a prison–it can be a storm that blows out the light of our inspiration and passion. The world is full of wonders every single day that we’re alive, but they’re only going to benefit us if we’re able to recognize them and take advantage of them. If we’re pining after something in our past, though, we’re going to be blind to all that is in our lives today, and that’s quite a shame.

Let’s leave the past in the past, where it belongs, and stop digging it up to ruin today. Let’s focus on the present moment and the future, and give ourselves a chance to live happy, full, and complete lives. The past can give us nothing–only today can contribute to our well-being and happiness.