“Stop rehearsing the past and start embodying your future,” zuluisms.  I’ve spoken numerous times about letting the past lie, how we can’t carry the weight of it with us because it gets too heavy.  One of the biggest mistakes I ever made (but didn’t want to fully admit until I was an adult because I didn’t want it to be my fault) was that I held onto everything from the past.  Part of it is my nature because I am a record keeper.  I detail and remember everything—sure that’s gotten a bit hazy as I’ve gotten older and have been dealing with more periods of stress—and the past was something that played over and over in my mind and the mind can’t tell what is real and what isn’t.  If it’s playing in our mind, it thinks it’s happening right now.  So if I’m reliving what was already done and thinking about the emotion of it, then I’m carrying and living through that emotion again in the present.  If that isn’t something I want to experience then I don’t have to.  I can envision and start living a new vision—something better to come. 

This can be easier said than done—I am a living testament to that.  I was afraid to let go of it because I was afraid I would forget and my entire life I wanted to remember.  I was born behind the 8 ball so to speak—all the major family events were ending by the time I came around, the parties were ending, the gatherings were dwindling, the usual meetings on Sundays were further and further apart and no one seemed to want to do anything about it.  I wanted all of that, I wanted the memories the rest of the family had so I clung to everything, desperately trying to instill and feel that nostalgia and that inclusiveness that they had.  But that led to some difficult habits because I lived in a manufactured past, something that wasn’t my own.  And that led to remembering all the things I didn’t want to, every mistake, every minute error that wouldn’t be an issue to anyone else yet seemed to drive me insane because I couldn’t change it.  It was a past I wanted and didn’t have and past I had but didn’t want and both of them kept me from being where I was.

Presence is one of the simplest yet most challenging things we have to accept the concept of.  We remember things so linearly but that isn’t how time works.  It all IS and that’s what makes time so complicated.  We are here and now but we have all of those pieces of the past in us.  Throw in the influence of those around us, the blood in our veins, and the happenings of the moment, and we can very easily get skewed in where we are going.  We are all multiple versions of ourselves at all times but we know who we are at the core and we have to remember that and live that no matter what we go through.  The future us is there no matter what we do and we need to make sure we are honoring the version of ourselves we want to be.  I had to learn how to create a vision for myself so I had an idea of where I was going—where I wanted to go and who I wanted to be that honored who I was but also who I AM.  We don’t get to where we are without being who we were.  It’s complicated and painful at times but it is always beautiful because there is no erasing what we’ve been through—but it isn’t what has to be moving forward.  We simply need to BE.