I wonder why we seem to think there is some kind of before and after in our lives. We achieve this glory moment and it defines us, we learn this skill and it makes us valuable, we had these troubles and it took us down or we made this or that mistake and it made us weak. Why do we feel such a need to either live in the past or let go of it? Why can we not just accept our becoming every moment along the way? Our glories give us confidence, our skills learned give us momentum, our troubles give us strength and our mistakes are merely us discerning what we want and what we don’t want in our lives.

How quickly we seek to remove the stones that are the foundations for the castles we hope to build.

If something no longer serves us, so what? Maybe it doesn’t want to. Maybe we should find something that does, or better yet, serve ourselves. If we’re not appreciated where we are then we’re not appreciating ourselves enough to be elsewhere. If we don’t like what we do or how we feel, who’s responsible for changing that? Everything up to now is just us becoming who we are now on the way to more. That’s it.

We’re all in the same world making our way through as best we can at any given moment.

Everything we’ve done is just another paint stroke on the canvas, this masterpiece of life we’re creating of ourselves. Sometimes the colors are violent, or sorrowful, or bold, or bright. It doesn’t matter because we add depth and texture every day by the choices we make and the talent we learn by being brave enough to do so. Everything we’ve ever given out or taken in, no matter how selfish or noble has grown us to who we are so far.

There is no past tense, no before and after, there is only us constantly becoming.

Shakespeare wrote, “What’s past is prologue”…meaning what has happened up until now only sets the stage. Everything we’ve been and done matters, but this is not the whole of us.

Every moment had value in creating now, and now is all we have to savor. So we should. We forget that our lives should be held as sacred as the moment of sunset when the edge of dying light is at it’s most beautiful. We know it’s important to pay attention, allow ourselves to be in awe of it, to perceive in clarity and detail the wonder of what we’ll only hold for a sliver of time.

What’s past is prologue. No shame, no blame, just a becoming of life at it’s most beautiful.