I remember being a child and playing in a park. We would spend our summer days in the park, with all the freshly cut lawn, the swings and the sand to play in. Every once in a while, we would get the bright idea to try and chase our shadows to see if we could out run the darkened shape. Of course, as adults we know the results. As a child though, it kept us active and we kept running after that figure on the ground and hoping some how we would pass it on our journey. Do you still chase shadows? I ask, as in this life I have had many contacts and experiences with things that stood high in my memories. I look back over the years and see these things standing tall with the sun behind them, as their shadow cast into the day I live. I turn to move ahead in time, and think that these shadows will go away, and hope that one day I will stand in the sun without these pillars of past memories. What kind of memories? Well for me, I think a lot about my time in the religion at times. Not so much in the negative of anger, but more in the small pieces. Perhaps I remember "telling on a good friend" for something I thought was wrong, and then seeing that friendship harmed in a way that could never be forgiven. I get those memories of shunning people and see there hurt, and wondering why I was so easy to judge them. So many small memories make up the vast amount of time that I was a Witness. I am honest with myself that many of them were good, but I am truthful with myself when I remember that some of them were very wrong. So why do I do this? I think it is something inside us that says, "in order to move on you have to resolve all these issues." Yet it seems that the more I think about them, the larger those past thoughts seem and the shadow they cast in my current life seems more stretched out and endless. There have been so many times in this life, where I will sit wasting a day or a hour thinking to deep on those past memories, and working out in my head what I should have done. Yet in the end, I realize "you can never change the past." So what does that teach me? Well it is seems to be this weird lesson I should have learned as a child. You see these memories of my past are not some separate part that can be ran from, they are what makes up me. The shadow they cast, is me. So much like that child from many years ago that thought he could out run his shadow, yet learned the shadow would always be there. I have learned that to waste my energy trying to out run my past guilt, and concerns is a equal exercise in futility. We are basically a accumulations of all the days that lead up to this point. The only thing we can change is the days ahead, but the days behind are just that "behind us." So no more chasing shadows for me, I know where it belongs and it can stay there my entire life. My thought Dragon
Edited by - kenpodragon on 4 October 2002 15:49:7