Keep Moving Forward
Disney’s Meet The Robinsons was one of the first cartoons we introduced to our daughter shortly after she was born, and it became one of her favourites. I had never watched it too.
What caught me initially, was the ‘craziness’ of the cartoon characters. The Robinsons in the future were definitely not what you’d call a normal family. Then I got emotionally caught up in Lewis’ desire to find out why his mother abandoned him.
It didn’t hit me until after I’d watched it — probably a 100 times — that Lewis was stuck in his past — yearning to find out why his mother left him at the orphanage.
Another character who had it bad for the past was Goob, Lewis’ roommate at the orphanage. He blamed Lewis for the sleepless nights he experienced when Lewis was working on his inventions in their room. His lack of sleep made him miss the winning catch, which consequently made the team lose the championship. He held on to that single moment until it transformed him into an evil, vengeful and senseless human being. His one desire was to ruin Lewis’ future, even though he had no intelligent way of accomplishing it.
Sometimes, it feels safe and comfortable to remain in the past. I get to lay the blame on someone else for whatever failure, or rough patch I experienced, which according to me, is invariably responsible for my current pathetic state of being.
I just sit and watch as the days go by and keep saying to myself: “if they hadn’t done that” , or “if they’d let me know in time,” or…you get the idea, an endless series of blame-heaping episodes. Or I get stuck on a past event, which I believe is pivotal to my future, refusing to see any other way past it.
It’s not always about the bad stuff too. There are times I find myself getting stuck in the glory days. Oh yea, when I “did a thing,” when times were smooth sailing… Then I hit a couple of stumbling blocks, and instead of stepping over them to move on, I just stay put, reveling in what good moments I had enjoyed, refusing to see what could lie ahead of the obstacles before me.
Through the years, I have seen that if I spend the present thinking up bright ideas and working on them for the future, instead of mulling over the past, my present will actually be enjoyable.
It’s OK to go back to the past and do a little inventory or progress check every now and then, but I shouldn’t linger there for too long and long for it.
After all, its been said that our eyes are in front so that we keep moving forward.
The future is alive today, so let’s live in the present!
Originally published at http://sweetnessofinnocence.blogspot.com. with some slight edits to this version.
