Past, Present, and Future
I sometimes feel like I have no past. Like there cannot possibly be any future, for everything I have done has become nothing.
I find that the same decisions I made in the past, I am now making in the present. But if I make the same choices now, my future will be the same as the past. I don’t want that. I try so hard to prosper by doing what I think is right but I realize to reinvent myself, I have to change not only how I make decisions, but also change the reasons why I make them.
Are my decisions made on a logical basis? Or are they made on the premise of daydreams? Do I own who I am and the decisions I have made? Or do I shift the blame, and the power, to someone else?
If you answer such questions from deep within who you are, you will come up with a true answer to any dilemma you are dealing with. You can begin to pursue a dream that is a reality, not just a pipe dream of maybes.
My entire life has been lived with a daydream-chasing mentality. I have always had good ideas and usually could make them happen, but at the end they were never feasible. They were always tied to someone else’s brain or desire, never birthed from my intelligence or my God-given purpose. I felt like I always had the counterfeit of ideas. In turn, I had to struggle, work harder, and receive less than I felt I deserved.
It was as though I came in late and missed the reality of things. Or that I left too early because of lack of knowledge to make something happen. So the dream would fail and I would chase after another un-achievable project because someone told me how great it was and that I would prosper beyond belief. That part would be true, because it was always just another puff of smoke after the forest fire.
Life was not given to be wasted. Rather, we are to adhere to a simple set of rules as soon as we are born. The first rule is to breathe. After that, you are pretty much on your own. How you learn the rest of the rules depends on the people that come into your life. What you learn from them will shape your thoughts and actions according to what they teach you in your early years, but there will come a time when you have to decide who you are and what is the moral thing to do. All the teaching, ideas, and convictions of the ones you received your knowledge from will serve as a tool chest of sorts.
But remember, it is other people’s thoughts and ideas. Yes, they will play into your decision-making process, but you have to be accountable for your actions, thoughts, and wisdom. You use the knowledge you have received from others. You use your integrity or lack of it. All this results in decisions made by you.
You now are in control … or out of control. Whether you become wealthy or poor depends on you. It is your choice whether you want to become wealthy at the price of your integrity, or use your integrity, keeping your morals intact and do what is right to be the best you can be.
I love who I am and my integrity, I believe, is intact. At the same time, I feel a great loss. In my formative years, I thought education was a waste of time. I now know education is the main tool to help you decide not only what you want out of life, but education will also give you the blueprint to build your dreams and the knowledge to acquire the tools with which to build.
You will then have to supply the integrity, moral goodness, love, and compassion to do the building. Then and only then will you be able to look at the past with pride, look forward with anticipation to the future, and love the present that you’re in.