nostalgia my friend...?

i'll say this, grinning in the rear-view for too long causes one to wreck a car. i wonder if that is true for myself of late. in a very recent exchange, i'll be open to say that i've grown up for better and for worse this past year. for one, my beard is now thicker (humor ladies and germs...) as well the scratchings on my hands. i know not where my future lies still, but my past haunts like my shadow with revenge wrapped tightly round it's wrist. i look at the things i've done in the name of fellowship, grace, temper, and dare i say love; not one of which has done me the way i intended. rather, God has had a plan all along. as it turns out, i'm a rather lousy listener. looking back i wish that i had seen all of the signs and cues to wave me off the troubled path my stride led me down. still, i have very few regrets (mostly only those that led to bodily injury.) but more to the point, as i gaze back at the hills and depths i've traversed, i see only series of events that somehow seem rather discontent and irreconcilable with my current life. "progress" from a hopeful and prideful young man (in a good way if there ever were such a thing) to one quickly becoming devoid of contention with status; befuddled by unseen observation and coy judgement balanced only by the meek hope for what is next to come. it's an awfully harsh understanding, but one that i think not far off. we as people tend to see what we want, to hear what truly has never been said. as if that weren't enough for the present, our look back to the past makes this practice even more troublesome. what we think to be eye-witness testimony in the form of first person narratives, reveals itself only to be the back end of a pressing 'what if?' conversation held on the picket lines of memory and fraud.

now that's terribly meta-speculative. but it can't help but be asked: how do my memories correspond truly to what i've taken in as experience? a question i don't care to address in this state of mind (also the Cartesians could tell you much more than you would want to hear on the subject). but rather, i've found (corresponding to my original intentions for this indulgent quest) that my past does nothing for me. i look back and see the happy things, and ignore the bad things. you might suggest this isn't such a bad thing. i'll say this, i'n a rough time would you rather see what you once had and lost, or where you've always been? i'd suffice to say that if all i'd known was heartache, the change would be welcome. drama and persistent concern for relation to others is a volatile equation: the products of which possess a viscous reminder, even to this day, of my own mistakes.

i'll submit that, once again, a person's past is his enemy. it reminds the sinner where he had been and sins he's acquired. it reminds the saint of a similar situation and the inadequacies of his current self. Psalm 37:37 reads, "Mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for a man of peace." my only concern is my own peace. my past offers none. my future is the only semblance of peace i can muster. there, and only there in the comforting arms of a Man who is Peace, will i obtain my favor. my sutchers, fresh though they may be, are naught. admirable and hollow those words echo within my head. i do believe them. i just often forget them.