Bringing the Past with Us

Imagine if you wrote an autobiography every year. Not just a reflection of that year, but you actually rewrote the whole thing every year.

Where you are and where you are going would change in each version. But from where you’ve come would remain the same, right? The last part of the book would change, but the first part could be cut and pasted from previous versions.

Not exactly.

From where we’ve come changes, too. Facts don’t evolve, but because we grow and change, how and what we see when we look backward changes too. Old experiences take on new meaning, peripheral details become central, and the depths of our insights grow.

Life is lived forward but understood backward. Consider this: if understanding life is part of living then we are always living both forward and backward at the same time.

We are all called to leave home, to leave what is familiar, to be stretched and challenged. But we are not called to forget. The unknown future needs what we have learned from “home”.

The good and more-so the bad.
The beautiful and more-so the ugly.
The intelligence and more-so the ignorance.

Yes, leave, but bring what we have learned with us because the story we’re about to write about our future needs those insights.