No Birds in Last Year's Nest

These lines from Longfellow suggest some self-searching:

“For Time will teach thee soon the truth,

There are no birds in last year’s nest!”

Often we regret and brood about past decisions: what we should or shouldn’t have done. Or we think of what we should now be doing and are not doing, of what we would like to learn, and it makes us uneasy. We regret misunderstandings — words we wish we hadn’t said — words we wish we had said — mistakes we have made, people we have offended, opportunities gone by — errors and carelessness that could have been avoided — places we might have gone, things we might have been. The past has its place and is valuable for lessons learned. The present also has its place, and what we cannot change should not now needlessly keep us from looking and moving forward. Nothing lost or left behind should keep us from now becoming what we can become, from learning what we now can learn. There are new decisions every day, every hour, and reasons to improve and to repent. Whatever we are, wherever we’ve been, each day we have some opportunity to determine direction. Each day we need to win, or keep — and certainly to deserve — the love of loved ones; each day to be more patient, more pleasant, more understanding. If there have been loved ones neglected, unreconciled differences, unspoken gratitude, unacknowledged debts, we ought to do now what we should do. If there has been within something that has soured us, we well would turn now to sweetening ourselves, for we hurt ourselves as well as others when we live below the level of our possibilities. Whatever the past or its meaning, or its length, or its losses, or its lessons learned or left unlearned, we go on from where we are — wherever we are — and become what we can become; with work, repentance, improvement; with faith in the future. “For Time will teach thee soon the truth, There are no birds in last year’s nest!”