I was watching a show earlier and one of the characters said to his brother “if you’re going to make it work, you’ve got to let go. You’ve got to let go of your past.”

That is a difficult one for me. My past is so much of who I am today, and if I have to let it go to make something work, then I’m not sure I want it to work. And I fear that that will leave me without a future. It goes both ways; If I let go, I’ll have a future that has nothing to do with my past. If I hold on, it leaves me only with a future I imagined many years ago. The reality of it all is that my future will probably be a combination of the two and something unpredictable and unexpected. Maybe you’ve heard this: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

I hold my past closely, guarded in my mind and my words, and I do not want to let it go. I just silently carry it everywhere with me because any time I’ve ever tried to deviate from it I did not like where I was headed. I missed it, and the future seemed dim in comparison to what my past had laid out for me. I felt as though it wouldn’t be enough. At least not enough of what I wanted for myself.

All that really matters, I suppose, is that we’re moving forward. And I suppose what I’m struggling with is understanding when I’m moving forward, or backward or in circles, because we are always moving. If I don’t feel like I’m moving forward, is that enough? It is always different from the outside looking in than it is from the inside looking out. But if I feel it, is that enough to stop it all and go back to what I was doing? To go back to the future I planned for myself? If I thought it was holding me back, I’d give it up, but strangely enough it feels quite the opposite. My past is what pushes me forward, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.