On Returning to the Pattern of the Past

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

Life is fluid and flowing, varied and ever moving. And there is never a single moment that we can hold for more than a moment. We cannot say to time, to circumstances, or even to ourselves, “Stop, and stay as you are.” We cannot say to any situation or 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 likewise cannot be stopped and still be life.

But movement means change, and change means comparisons. And comparisons may show us some things, perhaps many things, from the past that we could well want to bring back.

If, for example, there are important principles from which we have now too far departed, we had better do our best to turn toward them again. If there was once a safer and simpler sense of values, we had better do our best to bring that back.

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 precisely to some previous pattern, if we are postponing preparation, if we are passing the opportunities of the present, if we are waiting for what once was to come back and be again just as once it was, we are wasting time. Life moves in one direction only⎯ ever eternally onward. And whatever it once lacked or whatever it once had, the past is passed.

There are principles that forever persist, from which it is dangerous to depart, and toward which we must evermore earnestly tend; but some things properly belong to the past, and we should take from today all the good it has to offer, and not waste time brooding about those parts of the pattern that can never completely return.