We humans have a tendency to view our lives in very linear terms. We make distinctions about past, present and future that are increasingly suspect as we learn more about the nature of the universe. That same linearity applies to how we think about our own paths; a series of choices we have made of our own volition or more likely we believe, our responses to the opportunities and challenges presented us by that same universe. We see paths of progression or dead ends—branches leading to our present circumstance which we celebrate or regret. Neither of these an appropriate reflection though. The truth is that we are always becoming.
When we permit the decisions of our past to cast a shadow across the present we are greatly mistaken in our premise. Though we should know better, what we call the past is of value solely to instruct us not shape our destiny, unless of course we permit it to do so. It is true that we cannot undo what has been done—much less alter the rippling consequences of prior decisions and actions but neither are we held hostage by them unless we anoint the past with a power it does not possess.
Intellectually, we may know that we hold no sway over past and future only the present, but our emotions are simple creatures, uncomprehending of such distinctions. They present us with a picture of narrowing options and incontrovertible outcomes. Rarely, we are surprised to find that the author of this narrative is mistaken, and past is not prologue.
It’s been said that life is a poor teacher, administering tests before it has provided lessons but that is a false premise. Our aphorisms betray us into believing that we knew what we now know; that we are the same people we were and not a new creature each day we rise. Bound by chains of inevitability we surrender to a hopeless conspiracy, powerless to alter our course. We fail to see the instruction only the consequence and in so doing we fulfill our self-imposed prophecies.
No wonder then the allure of the counter metaphors; the wiping of slates; of starting afresh, of being made new. So, we look for absolution doubting the power to grant it ourselves. Shirking the responsibility for our present we turn to higher powers for relief from ourselves and vow never to repeat past transgressions even as we wrap their shadows around us as a cloak of despair.
Perhaps you are familiar with this seemingly cryptic passage from 1st Corinthians. It is famously quoted at weddings and other occasions professing love, but the wisdom of the latter verses conveys a different message. “But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”
There are, to be sure, layers of meaning to be mined from this passage. But I draw attention to its application to the subject of today’s post. We know in part, only so much as we have lived and experienced life and only to the extent those experiences have instructed us. We prophesy in part, forecasting a future as yet unrevealed and shape that future in the image of the past because we know only what we know. We see only a reflection as in a mirror looking backward never forward, never at what is present before us.
But there is hope, as the passage concludes. We shall see face to face, we will know fully and be known. I suggest that the moment of that awakening is not when we pass from this world, but when we accept the gift of the new day unburdened by the weight of that past and able to show ourselves as we are now—a work in progress becoming, always becoming.
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