Unless you are moving forward, you are simply holding on or perhaps going backwards. Past practice may consume your seeing and thinking and responding. You relive the past in the present. Pretty much you tend to play out the present as, once upon a time, you did the past.

You tend to hit the same obstacles. You flounder as you floundered before. Life presents itself to you the way it used to. It brings out the same things within you that it used to do. Beloveds, it is not meant to be this way.

Hit the road, Jack. Hit the road.

You are meant to see differently and then grow until you burst all boundaries.

Imagine all that you learned in the first year of your life. A bushel. It’s phenomenal.

Now that you are adult, your life is to continue to grow. You’re not done yet. To grow means to expand. To grow means to learn. To grow means to grow up. To grow means to change. Even when growing means you have to be sadder and wiser, grow. Grow in the direction you want to grow in.

You cannot stay the same. You can’t stand still. Not even dead matter stays the same. But you are alive. You can hang on to a rung of a ladder or you can climb up a rung.

When you’ve come this far, keep climbing.

This is how to gain independence. I won’t say going out on a limb, though you may see this as letting go of the limb you presently hold onto. Beloveds, there is no status quo. Move ahead or slip back. Go higher or fall back.

There is an expression: “Knock some sense into your head.”

Let’s phrase this differently and say: “Knock some old sense out of your head.”

Cells grow and change in life. Skin flecks off in order to be new. Hair falls out. New hair grows in. Entropy seems to mean trying to stay the same.

Let laughter ring. And, yes, let tears fall because today you are wiser than yesterday. Something has to happen. You often wonder what is the meaning of life. Life means to grow. The words Life and Light begin with the same sound. Say just the first syllable and hold it with a little diphthong as if the beginning sound holds two syllables, and you will begin to feel it, this long note with a rising and a beginning leading to a landing above itself.

And if you make mistakes and have to go back, well, then, go back and start over again.

What you were adamant about yesterday, today you may be appalled about. You can’t stay the same as yesterday. Try to stay the same and you turn your back on yourself. You disavow yourself. Better to catch up with yourself or even get ahead of yourself.

Truth is ahead of where you have put your feet in the past. Everyone knows there is nothing like an apple fresh from the tree. Why would you assert that stale thoughts you hold onto must be better than anything you could come to next?

You can’t rehash the past forever. Old thinking fades and dries out. It’s unlikely that the past will satisfy forever or even until tomorrow.

The last epigraph you would want to be said about you would be:

“He held onto to his old thoughts as if old thoughts preserved him.”

Better to have the last words said about you every day be:

“He arose like the phoenix from the ashes, and how he grew!”