David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

past

Leave your dead past behind; that’s not where you’re going

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Late Sunday night, I had the old Beatles song “Yesterday” on my mind because it came up in discussion yesterday. As the lyrics floated through my mind, I found myself realizing — almost with surprise — that I can’t identify with the song’s longing for something better from the past.

I’m not exactly happy with where I am now. There are certainly periods in the past when I had it better — felt more love and had more money. All of that is true.

But I long for the future, not for yesterday.

I believe in tomorrow being what I’ve been looking for. I believe that the best days lie ahead of me. I believe there’s love waiting for me. I believe there is success beyond what I’ve dared to dream. And I think it’s a good thing that those better times are in the future, not in the past.

Yesterday is dead.

I’m focused today on the things I need to do to make tomorrow what I want it to be.

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It’s great to visit Memory Lane, but it’s fatal to try to live there

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I took a shortcut Friday afternoon from my office to my barber shop that took me through an industrial area where I used to spend a lot of time.

I hadn’t been on that part of Oxmoor Road in Homewood for about 15 years. Several of the printing companies I used to deal with — when I was a political consultant — are located in the area, so I was flooded with memories of late-night visits to do press-checks on mail pieces for my clients.

I printed dozens of jobs at Craftsman Printing right over there. Across from them was the old building where PressTech used to be before the owner — a man who did me more favors than I can count — unexpectedly killed himself on the press floor late one night.

My memory was flooded with faces and images and sensations of my time in the area. Part of me enjoyed the sweetly bitter sensation of experiencing a past which is now dead, but another part of me wanted to leave the area and never return. And then I had a sudden thought.

Memory Lane is a one-way street — and it’s a dead end.

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It’s best to focus on future, ’cause dead past is a ‘bridge to nowhere’

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I got an email a couple of months ago from someone I hadn’t heard from since high school. He and I were never close, but we knew one another from taking all the upper-level math and science classes together. He had been to a class reunion the night before and looked me up online to tell me about people asking about me — and even thinking he might be me.

I’ve never been to a reunion of any kind. Over the years, I’ve been tracked down by reunion committees who seem to assume that everybody is eager to know when a class is getting together, but I’ve never been tempted to go to a reunion. Not for high school. Not for college. Not for any workplace.

I’m not mad at anybody from the past. I simply don’t care. All of those people are strangers to me now. For years, I’ve puzzled over why I seem to feel so differently than most other people do about such things and I think I’ve finally figured it out. Most people seem to believe their best times were in the past — and they’re eager to relive some of that past — but I’m convinced my best and most interesting days lie ahead.

Unless someone from my past is going to be part of my future, that person has no place in my life, because the past is dead and buried.

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