Learn From The Past. Live In The Present. Dream Of The Future.

A comment on the past got me thinking. Some people tend to live in their past, others run from it, then there are those, like me, who think of the past as a time where life's experiences are gathered.

Everything we are today is a culmination of our prior selves. We can not change the past, hide from it, nor are we welcome back to live in it. We can look back on it but should never look down or up on it.

The present is such a fleeting thing. It is the time when dreams succeed or fail. It is the result of our choices from the past in the now, while dreaming of the future. We always live and learn in the present. Then the present quickly slips into the past and can be lived no more. Some people somehow hail the present as the who they are. We are only the past expressing itself in the current form.

It makes me think of the title, "The Road Not Taken.", from an often misinterpreted poem. When Frost, the author, was asked about the poem, he explained it was completed for a friend. This friend was going off to war and neither road he chose would be a good one.  The subject of the poem was not wondering what if, he was wondering why. He did not realize his past decisions, prompted the present paths that he could take and ultimately defined his future.

Though we can't live in the future, we can live for it. It is past and present hopes and dreams awaiting the chance to shine. It is the time in which dreams can never die and our present will inevitably lead to.

All of this gets me to my points I wanted to make. 

• To ignore the past is to limit who we are and can become. 
• To live in the past is to waste our present and hinder the dreams of our future. 
• To learn from the past is to move forward, better prepared, into our present and better still for our future.