A Matter of Perspective

I like eating at Chinese restaurants and go there whenever I am able to do so. I like all the vegetables and savory dishes.

One of my favorite parts, though, is the fortune cookie at the end of the meal.

Admittedly, some of them are lame. But today was one of those rare days that I got a good one.

“Don’t let the past and useless details choke your existence.”

Wow! That one hit the spot.

How often do we let things in our past drag us to that place of regret and the futile task of beating ourselves up about it?

Talk about a “useless detail!”

How many people choke their existence with things that are meaningless?

The book of Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 2 says this:  “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

So take those useless details (meaningless details?) and forget them because I’ll tell you what, living a life filled with regrets is a very hard, tiring task. I know, because up until a few years ago that was how I lived every day. 

I would beat myself up so bad mentally at the end of the day that I was surprised I would wake up the next morning.

We can all live in our pasts, but think about this—there is no future in it!

Each day is a new day for us to start over. Once you start over, don’t keep peaking over your shoulder at your past.

Yes, our pasts make us and shape us, but so many of us choose to let errors in our pasts define us. We do not need to define ourselves by our past transgressions. We need to accept that those things happened and move on!

Why wallow in muck of the past when we can move past our pasts?

I know moving past things is hard. It takes a transformation, but if I can do it, anyone can.

A new thing for me, too, is not beating myself up if I do slip up and make a mistake. Yep. I am human and sometimes that happens, but I can’t beat myself up, all I can do is ask for forgiveness from whomever it is necessary to ask it of and move on again. 

It is getting easy to ask for forgiveness. It is also getting easier in many areas of my life to not make the same mistakes over and over.

I’m not letting my past or useless details choke my existence and I hope you are not either. I have a lot left to learn and do and I intend to spend every day I have left trying to make the world a better place, not a place of mere living, but a place of real life!