Looking Back

Sometimes I simply stop and watch time flow past, in the faces of the people walking by. They come and go, one by one, the way memories thin out of a life.

Every passing face reminds me of something. For a moment I return to it. I recall the beauty and the cruelty, the joy and the sorrow. Here is my advice: keep your life vigorous. Keep it vigorous so that none of it is wasted, neither the pain nor the gladness, neither the grief nor the delight.

A person lives on memories anyway. Who has ever forgotten the past without losing their memory? Yet remembering pain and living inside it are two different things. I say this: look at the scar and remember not the wound but how you healed it. That is why I revisit the past so often. Remembering happiness gives energy; seeing how the pain passed gives strength.

So today's advice is to look back a little. Look at the sorrows behind you. See how they came and went. And how we grieved while inside them. We thought the world had stopped, that everything was over, that the pain would kill us. Did it? No. Will we die one day? Yes. Then if we are going to die anyway, why all this worry, my friend? Get on with living. Time is flowing. Take a glass of tea, sit somewhere comfortable, stretch your legs. Watch the view if you have one, watch the people, and share a joke with life. Then see how everything settles.

There is nothing in this world more valuable than you. Never forget that.

Be well.