thankfulness/Y

Today I’m thankful for yesterdays. Not all yesterdays. Just like all tomorrows won’t necessarily be something to be thankful for, not all yesterdays are either. But at least tomorrows hold promise. Yesterdays only hold memories. We can’t rewrite memories. Or can we?

Our past is our past, the facts of it, but not our interpretations of it. I’ve looked back at a lot of my yesterdays, even the ones I’d rather forget, and have come to understand how they’ve contributed to who I am. Without my yesterdays, I wouldn’t be who I am.  Without my yesterdays I wouldn’t have hope that I could handle my tomorrows.

When one thinks about it, wouldn’t you rather think about your yesterdays? At least, for the most part, they hold no surprises, although I think all of us have moments that suddenly break in on us and open a window to a past memory.  Sometime we call it déjà vu. That uncanny feeling that we’ve been here before, done this before but can’t for the life of us remember who, what, when, where, how. But we know.

Sometimes that déjà vu shows up when we react in an extreme way to someone or something. There is a word for me that often catapults me back many years. No matter to whom the word is directed, whether it’s in a movie, a book or a conversation, it takes me back to a young teen-age girl.  

My mother wanted me to have all the fun she felt she had missed. I was a constant reminder of her unfulfilled dreams. It never occurred to her that what I did or didn’t do had nothing to do with her that.  To this day, she allows circumstances and people to determine her joy.

I am my mother’s daughter.  At times I have followed her example by letting people and circumstances determine my joy. 

This post is about being thankful for our yesterdays-and I am.   

We all have some painful yesterdays but we all have hope for our tomorrows also. If your yesterdays include periods of depression or if you’re worried that your tomorrows might, don’t be afraid to look back and neutralize some of those painful memories. Try to reinterpret them in a way that doesn’t excuse or condemn the perpetrator but frees the victim-you. Depression quite often gets a foothold because we’ve let the past fester.  

 Today will be your yesterday soon enough so make today count.