About a year and a half ago I made a big boo-boo. I got curious about the value of a few of my old toys and started looking at antique dealer sites. Well, the next thing I knew I was looking for all sorts of toys I had as a kid and drooling over them when I found them listed, thinking back to the joys of my childhood, which actually was rather idyllic and Leave-It-To-Beaverish. And it got worse. I discovered e-bay and it was only through the greatest effort of self-control that I managed to avoid driving us into financial ruin by bidding on all sorts of things. Fortunately I was able to control myself and have only purchased a few items that were of some great sentimental value as well as having some use in my life now.
But that did not stop me from grabbing the pictures and spending hours living in a state of rhapsodical memory, thinking back to the time when I was young and the world was new.
Fortunately I snapped out of it.
Years ago, if an unpleasant memory would surface, I would visualize a grave and think, “The past is dead, bury it!” And that works real well for the unpleasant ones. It is so much harder to bury the pleasant memories but that has to be done too if one is to progress in life.
Likewise obsessing about former lives and loves leads only to sadness and maybe even madness. It must be a horrible thing to live with someone whose entire life is dedicated to reliving the mistakes of the past. What has been done is done and nothing now can change it. The years go by and we grow older. We change and those around us change. We can deal with our lives in the present and make plans for the future even if we are so old that our future may be measured in days rather than decades, or we can be like the worthless, drooling senior citizens remembering a depression that no one cares about any more or a war that one wonders which side they actually fought on. They are obsolete people from an obsolete time, of as little use as the rotting hulks of the factories that used to stink of their body odor.
I’m writing this sitting next to one of those toys from so long ago on a machine that was not even dreamt of when that toy was made and because of this machine I can influence the world in ways that could not even be conceived when I sat playing with it. Today is bright and sunny, as sunny as any of the summer days of my long-lost childhood and tomorrow will be even better. In a weird, peculiar and somewhat mad way I have helped change the world and the ripple effect of those small things makes itself felt far and wide now and all of that has its roots in those toys from long ago.
But the root is not the flower. And if I were to die today it would not matter. What I have started does not need me any more and I can continue my research and my writing without having to proselytize. I no longer labor alone in the vineyard.
And to the one who lives in the past, and cannot see beyond it I say, “Forget the past, it is over and done with. Look to the future.”