Living In The Forward Gear

Life has no reverse gear. There is only for­ward. You can go slow or fast, but you can­not go back­wards. You may glance in the rear view mir­ror briefly, but you have to real­ize that mir­rors dis­tort as much as they reveal. For a moment, you see the back­side of some for­merly present event. You have to let it go. With time, it fades into a minia­ture sym­bol. Mem­o­ries are but token feel­ings. Take a look at what is head­ing toward you now. That is your pri­mary con­cern.
Is is not that we can­not learn from his­tory — on a grand or per­sonal scale. Those lessons are very nec­es­sary. We just can­not live in the past. What­ever takes us from the present robs us. Life really is in a con­stant “now” state. Pay atten­tion. The road under you is more impor­tant than the road behind you. Also, you can only see to the hori­zon. God blessed us with this lim­i­ta­tion. In a desert with no trees, on per­fectly flat land, the hori­zon is lim­ited to fif­teen miles. At sixty miles per hour, that means you live fif­teen min­utes at a time (which is a Bud­dhist prac­tice by the way). One hori­zon at a time.
Sports are played the same way. The ball is com­ing toward you across the net. You are run­ning down court to the next goal. You are skat­ing toward the puck. You are fol­low­ing the ball. What might be is the focal point, not what has been. It is who you are about to be that mat­ters most, not what you have been. The Bible calls it repen­tance. The game of life is in your present swing. Hit the ball. Carry it toward the goal. Pass it for your advan­tage. It is not what is on the score­board but what is about to be on the score­board that mat­ters most. Nos­tal­gia is an after-the-game event. It is for the other side of the grave.
The apos­tle Paul would have been at home watch­ing NASCAR or the Olympics. To him, it was all about the fin­ish line. Ignore the dis­trac­tions. You have a life to live. Go for it!