Really, you may not create every circumstance in your life, yet you do create an interpretation of every circumstance. When you spill milk, you might cry over it, or you might be one who laughs at it. In any case, you wipe it up. So why cry over it?
I realize it is not everything in life that you can be lighthearted about, yet have you not taken very seriously many occurrences that now you would not take so seriously? Are there not many events you have taken seriously for no reason but that you took them seriously? Of course, you can always justify taking anything seriously. It is your life, after all. You can choose to consider anything any way you want. Perhaps you can choose to laugh more. And when you cannot be lighthearted about it, then perhaps you can shrug your shoulders and move on. Even when you are at the gaming table, win or lose, there is the point where you get up and go home.
The past, whatever it may have been to you, does not have to linger in your heart. It was a meal you ate once. In the interim, you have eaten many other meals. Better to think about the meal you are sitting down to now. Some meals may have been perfectly indigestible, or they may have been the most glorious meals in the world, yet there is a meal for you to sit down to right now. This is the meal of the hour. This bite on your plate is the one to take now. What is the merit in trying to digest that which is no longer present, except as you say so, that is? You can make the past your every thought, and yet you cannot restore it nor improve on it. All you can do is deal with what occurs right now. Do not trammel the present with the past.
You have a beautiful vase of flowers, the most gorgeous bouquet ever seen in the world. Yet next week or so, the flowers will have made their adieu, and so you must say goodbye to them too. Flowers know they cannot stay the same, and they don't resist. They are not so foolhardy as you. They are not foolhardy at all.
What is there about the past that means so much to you that you must hold on to it against all odds? The past cannot keep records of itself. Why do you keep its records? Why do you when there are new flowers to pick? When you serve the past, you neglect the present. You are behind the times. Better to walk where your feet are now.
Why does leaving the past seem so sad to you? It may have been unbearable at the time, and yet now it is unbearable for you to leave it.
There is a new tree growing in your yard.
You, who say to yourself often enough, "Face facts," seem to lose sight of this fact. The past has endearing qualities to you, but it was the present once. That was when to pay attention to it. There is a present state of affairs right now that would like you to love it. It awaits your pleasure. It wants your attention now, not later. Right now, not tomorrow.
Pay attention to where you are and not where you have been, or imagine you have been.
Better to open a book today than to keep an old one on the shelf. Better to look in one direction than two. Better to be wide-eyed. Better to see what is right before you than what you thought was yesterday.
Come with Me now. Let Us walk through the green pastures. The green grass today will be tomorrow's hay. Love tomorrow's hay now while it is green. Give the grass its vibrancy now. How eager the grass today is to have you walk on it right now at this moment!