You Create Your Future, and Your Past, Now
Strange sounding title, isn't it? Most of you probably agree you
create your future now, by the choices you make in this present
moment. But how can you create your past now?
My mother and her sister, only about a year and a half apart in
age, grew to adulthood in the same house with the same parents
and siblings. (All are dead now.)
My mother's memories of her childhood were warm and happy. My
aunt's were not.
My mother adored her parents and saw them as kind, caring, and
loving. That's how I saw them too.
My aunt, on the other hand, saw her father as a cruel, heartless
tyrant -- and her mother as wimp for letting him be that way.
So which of these two different "pasts" is the real one?
Here's Chief Joseph.
CHIEF JOSEPH
Most of you would probably agree with us that you create your
tomorrow by the choices you make today. Or, to put it another
way, you create your own reality -- what you think and feel
today is what you live and experience tomorrow.
You are totally free to make any choices you want. And you are
also free to make no choices. But that also is a choice, and you
will create your reality by default. That is, you will take
whatever life "throws at you," without making deliberate and
conscious choices.
People in that situation -- which, remember, is still a choice
-- often feel like victims of fate.
And so it's clear you control your future by the choices you
make now.
But, friends, you also control your past -- again, by the
choices you make now.
Your past is no more a fixed, unchangeable reality than is your
future. Both are within your power to change.
If you accept the concept of creating your own reality, then you
know there are not two people on your planet who experience
exactly the same realities. If there are five different people
standing in a room, there are five different worlds in that room.
You will never fully know exactly what another is experiencing,
no matter how close you are to him or her.
And so, if your past is as flexible as your future, then you
have the power today to change, or to re-create, your past. You
have the power to mold your past, just as you have the power to
mold your future.
If you have a painful past, as John's aunt did, it's because you
have chosen today to focus on the pain. And that becomes your
"current" past -- the one you are living now.
If you have a joyful past, as John's mother did, it's because
you have chosen today to focus on the joy. And that becomes your
"current" past -- the one you are living now.
John asked the question, "So which of these two different
'pasts' is the real one?"
The answer is: "Both."
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