On Returning to the Pattern of the Past

We sometimes waste too much of the present in waiting for the return of the past. Much as we may wish otherwise, things are never again exactly as they once were. And whatever part of the past we might hope to bring back, we should not waste time by brooding about it.

Life is fluid, changing, moving. And there is never a moment that we can hold for more than a moment. We can’t effectively say to time, or even ourselves, “Stop, and stay as you are.” We cannot effectively say to any situation of to any season, “Stop, and stay as you are.”

In this respect, life is much like the movement of music. Music cannot be stopped and still be music. Any single sound that we hold too long becomes a monotonous note rather than a moving melody. And life cannot be stopped and still be life.

But movement means change, and change means comparisons. And comparisons. And comparisons may show us some things that we wish we could bring back.

If there are principles form which we have too far departed, we had better turn to them again. If there was once a safer, sounder sense of values, we had better put it in the present.

But the complete picture, the whole pattern, is never again going to reshape itself just as once it was. And if we are waiting for life to return to some precious pattern, if we are postponing preparation, or passing the opportunities of the present, while waiting for what once was to be again just as it once was, we are wasting time. Life moves in one direction only—whatever it was of whatever it wasn’t, the past is passed.

There are principles; there are values ad customs and practices of the past that are better left back there. We should take from today all the good it has to offer, and not waste time brooding about what will never come back.