Tom Sheppard
7/22/2019
The last two of our five children were born while we lived in this house and all five of our children had come to adulthood while we lived here. So, the home itself had a great amount of our hearts and lives invested in its very walls. The fact that our move was more or less being forced on us made the whole issue of leaving the house painful in itself. Also, moving meant getting rid of lots of accumulated "stuff." Much of that stuff was accumulated based not on monetary value but on sentimental value. Every parent knows what I am talking about. The pictures your children brought home which you hung on the fridge, etc.
In the midst of all the chaos of packing boxes, loading a moving truck, and emptying the house we came upon a box with this picture laminated and taped to the top of the box. At the time it struck me as a sort of message from God, so I took a picture of it and shared it with my wife.
I admit, amid the pain of the move it was cold comfort. Still, it did help me to push aside my own emotional upheaval and focus on what might be on the horizon, even if at the time the view ahead was a bit murky.
From this experience I learned to not put so much of myself into "stuff." The things we accumulate break, tear, wear out, and are eventually discarded. However, the things we do can remain alive in the hearts and minds of ourselves and those whose lives we touch.
Now, to me it seems like surrounding myself with a lot of stuff seems a lot like living in the past instead of looking toward the future. If we don't turn and face the future, it is going to smack us hard on the back of the head, because it will arrive whether or not we are facing it. I have found I would rather be looking ahead so that I can manage things coming at me much better than when I am living in the past, or looking to the past.
Don't get me wrong, I think we all need to examine our history (personal and otherwise) to learn from mistakes (and successes). And, we need to take those lessons learned and look at what is coming toward us and happening around us and see if we can use them to help us succeed amid all the noise and chaos of the present and the visible future. The problem comes when we stand there looking only backwards. Too often we are staring back at failures we experienced, and they are keeping us from succeeding in the future. Likewise, we may be staring back at our "glory days" believing that the best of us is now in the past. Being fixated on past successes is almost as deadly as being fixated on past failures.
Learn from the past, don't try to dwell there. On the other hand, facing the future doesn't mean trying to dwell on it either. What we see on the horizon may never end up at our feet. This may be because it turns aside, we turn aside, or we die before that coming wave reaches us. Instead of dwelling in the past, or fixating on the future we must live in the present and apply all our cunning, knowledge, and energy to making today as wonderful, valuable, and lively as it can be.
Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).
The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.
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