Sweep the floor of your mind. Have no old crumbs sitting there. Sweep out the old. Your life is not be spent on crumbs from the past. Anything of the past is to be swept up and taken out. No matter how vital something from the past may seem to you, it is gone. It’s not worth it to calibrate it over and over again.
Troubles and woes are to be taken out. No matter how important they have been to you, they are out of date. Cross them off your list. Your greatest happiness from yesteryear can amount only to a recollection now.
There are many things in life to keep fresh. Repeated memories are not one of them. It is as if you have chained yourself to a wall, and you chant over and over again, Why? Release yourself from chains of the past. Holding on is a weakness. Holding on is certainly not a strength.
Let go. Let go is what today tells you. When you hold on to the past, the accumulation holds you back. Stay alive in what is called the present, this moment of now that also is slipping away as We speak. Even when you get into nostalgia of the past, you set limits upon yourself. Both the beauty of the past and the pain of the past are not to be held onto. Why? Because the past is the past. Now is not the past. It is not to your benefit to hang onto the past, either the sweet or the unsweet.
You do not wear the same clothes today that you used to wear. You wouldn’t think of it. You know that the clothes from yesteryear no longer fit. You don’t persist in trying them on and looking at yourself in the mirror.
Yet memories of the past you may seem to feel obliged to go over again and again. Indeed, the past contributed to you, yet the past is not meant to catch up to you now. It is not your place to bring the past into the present. You are not meant to cling to the past and extol it any more than you are meant to blame it. Let go of the past, and let go of blame. Hie to the present. Make the present memorable. And then it, too, becomes the past, and you let go of it.
That you had the best grade on a test in 4th grade simply isn’t to be on your mind. If the thought comes, give it a hug and send it back. If you got the worst grade on a test in 4th grade, pat it on the shoulder and send it back. Old thoughts are old thoughts equally. Whether the thoughts bolstered you in the past or put you down in the past, they don’t belong to you any more. Nothing of the past belongs to you now. You are no longer in 4th grade. Past thoughts are not to be momentous to you now, for the moments have passed, and you are in a new arena now. You just absolutely have to let the past go to its rest.
When you live on a continent where winter is over, you cannot shovel snow, for the snow is gone. When you live on a continent where spring is over, you cannot find apple blossoms on the bough. Snow and apple blossoms simply are no longer present. Everyone knows that. You know that, and you don’t even try. You are not so foolish, yet, ah, when it comes to the past of memories, you may try to hold on to them for dear life.
O, to be a clean slate untrammeled by the past. The past doesn’t matter any longer. Only the present matters, and its time is short. Live the present now. The present is more than thinking about it. Life is much more than thinking about it.