Thought

You know I was just sitting here thinking about an old friend from my
school days that I've gotten back in contact with over the last year
while I was thinking back on all that's happened this year. It struck
me that things that happened while we were in school - this spring
will mark 10 years since we graduated - still hurt her today. Isn't it
sad that things so very long ago - sometimes decades - still hurt us
because we won't let them go? And I'm not talking stuff like death,
I'm merely talking about the way someone treated you or someone you
were close to. I received my share of the bullying and then some - and
yet it seems to have affected her more than me! She told me some of
the stuff that was said and done to me still hurt her today. What do
you say to something like that? Let it go? Get over it? Both sound
cold.
The honest truth is much simpler. Life - and the situations we face
while living it - make us who we are. All the bullying, taunting,
harassing, name calling, and physical torments I took made me a
stronger adult. However, I'm not saying that it was easy growing up;
it made for a very painful childhood, and a very lonesome one at that.
But it taught me how to be self-reliant in a world where it's
dog-eat-dog.
The stuff that still hurts me today is much more personal - the way my
family (for the most part) continues to treat me, the way some
"friends" treat me, etc. I can't live in the past, I realized this
long ago. The hardest part of that is letting go of those that have
died that meant so much to me, but even that is necessary to move on
and be a happy, successful person. Also, for all the effort in me, and
if it COULD be successful I would die trying, all the holding on in me
wouldn't be enough to bring my beloved Mom back. Let me tell you one
thing. I wouldn't want my Mom here anyways right now. The way this
world has turned in the nearly 7 years since Mom died hasn't been
pretty. I wouldn't have wanted her to see the terrorist attacks that
have happened across the world and on our home soil. I wouldn't have
wanted her to see the current state of world affairs, sure to remind
her of a war she grew up watching on tv. And surely I wouldn't want to
hear her rambling how this current administration reminds her of one
she remembered from "back in the day."
So here's my thought for the day. What are you doing with your life?
Are you so stuck in the past that your life seems to be going nowhere?
Or are you plucking ahead, periodically filing the past in its own
"filing cabinet" and moving forward, even if it's just an inch? Just a
thought, and thanks Walter for letting me steal your writing voice for
a minute LOL.