Remembering the past while looking to the future

As we roll into a New Year, you may or may not be pleased with your current circumstances.

Christmas and New Years are over, 2018 freshly under way.

It's a time to reflect and reassess.

What will the coming year, just two weeks old, bring? What will we gain? What will we lose?

Everyone's answer is different.

Many believe time, luck, promise and prestige are on their sides.

Others may view each day as a struggle or dedicated to holding on to happier times.

Perhaps you were once strong and find yourself faltering, wondering how things got so off track.

Perhaps your glory days are behind you, a memory fading with the sweep of the clock.

You may pine for those glory days, but don't waste the time longing for what is now the past.

Instead, remember those times and take comfort in them. There's glorious, powerful and shining moments and phases.

You have created or told a story every day of your existence.

By the way you live your life and the things you say, you have revealed, told, chronicled that story. You have built relationships, lived, loved, witnessed and rolled with the punches and the times.

Days gone by and other tales and stories are history. Human nature inclines us to remember the good stories and times over the bad.

A prolific Benedictine nun told me joys and sorrow are sisters living in the same house.

Other elements, specifically the certainties of life known as loss and change, that determine if joy and/or pain reign supreme in each moment.

There are people you are seeing and things you are doing today, right now, that won't always be there.

Make every moment count, take it in, sear the memories in your mind and run them in your heart.

If something in your life is ending, a marriage, a connection, a job, a season, a friendship, know it's OK to grieve.

It's healthy and necessary, not weak as some afraid to do it might tell us.

Grieving helps us come to terms, it helps us heal.

Make the most of whatever time is left.

Create those final memories.

Cherish the good times and memories. If you can and want to be there for those final moments, acts, or runs of something important, do it. It's scary and sad but courageous and brave.

Keep vigil through the literal and figurative darkness.

Pray a goodbye. Take in the sounds, motions, mannerisms.

People and things in our lives make an imprint in our lives and souls.

They shape us, influence us, inspire us. They become part of our story, a star in our personal constellation of friends, family and supporters.

Those stars are guiding, gleaming beacons that make our lives bearable. They educate, influence, empower and enrich us.

But time and trends change and as we all advance in age, we may feel insecure or irrelevant.

The truth is, no matter how viable and vibrant we are or may have been, holding onto all that bravado over the course of years or decades is impossible.

Eras and lives end. When they do, we must find a new way to tell and live our stories without those who have stood alongside us so long.

But no matter how hard the course or how uncertain the future, there is always hope.

It begins with a practice of daily mindfulness, considering and offering gratitude for our blessings and challenges, large and small.

Remember who and what helped you become who and what you are. It's part of your story as you swipe though those times lines or flip through those fleeting, figurative pages.

Thank them. Let them continue to live on in your heart and mind when their earthly race for and against time is done.

Life is a journey. Sometimes it will feel as if you are spinning your wheels in futility as the scenery never changes. But every forward motion, even if it feels like you are marking time in a stationary place, is part of a story. Your story. Mark those memories, recognize them and herald them.

We are reelin' in the years as Steely Dan told us all those years ago and sometimes our circumstances may change drastically, but we must roll on, sometimes find a new power, inspiration or way to survive.

Just think, you've done a good job serving yourselves and your company of friends even though circumstances change.

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