Okay, first point of conversation; I have failed on the commitment to
keep a new post each week. It's been what, a few months? Yea, I failed
badly. So here's a tidbit about myself, I'm bad at keeping time
commitments (and I suspect the amount of blogs I post once I start
school in the fall with go down majorly because of all the papers I'll
likely be writing). So let's just say that I'll post when I get the time
and the inspiration.
Now, onto the meat of the post. The
past couple days I've found myself longing for things and for people
and for times from months and years past. Nostalgia. It's my chosen
disease, which only afflicts me occasionally. But I had a very bad case
of it this past week. And I happen to know that I am not the only human
being to suffer from this.
For me, I can sometimes find
myself (as was the case this week) looking back on a time when I felt
happier and more secure than I do now and automatically I long for it;
to be able to go back to it. This past week I was trying to downsize on
my "stuff" (as my disease has a side-effect of pack rat tendencies)
and unpack/repack/organize some of my stuff still in boxes from my move
two months ago, and I came across some old journals and scrapbooks and
before I knew it I was caught up in them. I found myself reading a
journal entry and thinking "I remember when that happened, I wish I
could go back to that day" or looking at a picture and saying to myself
"I remember taking that photo, it would be nice to relive that". And the
onset of nostalgia began...
Then my brain jumps to related dates and people and things of the such and I just wish I could have it all here, right now. I
think of the few people that have heavily influenced my life in a
positive way and are no longer "in my life" (because Facebook and Skype
don't really count), and I wish I could gather them all here and have
them as my neighbors, roommates, and people that I share my life with
regularly again. I think of times when I had a set routine that worked
for me, that made my happy, and that I flourished under; and I wish I
could somehow have that same kind of routine in my life again. I think
of different places I've lived (5 provinces, somewhere around 20
"homes"), and wish I could somehow take the best part of each and jam it
all together to make this one awesome place.
So all in all, I've looked at each part of my
life over the past few years and wanted to bring it all together here
and now, where I'm at. But it doesn't work that way. I can't take three
completely different worlds and smash them all together. Nothing will
come out of that, it just won't work.
So in light of that, I
think of what to do with this disease I have (again, referring to
nostalgia). Do I deny myself the memories of the past? No, that would be
silly; memories are good as long as we don't constantly bring them to
the forefront of our minds. Memories are fun to look back at; that's why
we journal, and take pictures, and record history. Because a lot of
good can come out of the past, like learning from our mistakes and our
victories. So then, do I hoard my memories and live in the past?
No, again that would be silly. As an example, look at Uncle Rico in
Napoleon Dynamite (one of my favorite movies!). He's so caught up in his
past, his "glory days", and what could have come out of
them, that he's practically incapable of living his life that's right in
front of him. I can't do that, I need to have my mind present with me, I
need to be able to live the life that God is continually placing in
front of me.
So what do I do? Someone once put it this way:
Life is like driving a car, the past is in your rearview mirror and the
future is the road ahead of you. You can't drive with your eyes glued
to your mirror, otherwise you'll crash. You won't be able to effectively
drive if you're constantly looking at where you've come from. On
the flip side, you need to check where you've been to make sure you're
on the right path and to see if anything from behind to coming up. You
need to drive concentrating on the road right ahead of you and planning
for what is farther ahead, keeping in mind where you've just been. It's
all about balance.
Philippians 3:13 gives a good picture
of this. I really like the way that The Message translation puts it:
"Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in
all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward --- to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back." You see, God is beckoning us, calling out to us to
move forward. To move with Him into the future and into what He's doing
in the here and now, not to what He was doing yesterday.
So,
in review, being nostalgic has it's time and place but it can't been
constant. We're to "keep moving forward" (a reference to another
favorite movie, Meet The Robinsons) and walk into our future, the future
God has for us.
That's it for now. 'Til next time,
-B
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