I am fond of saying, ‘that was then, this is now’. I do truly believe this but is there more to the phrase than merely the obvious? More important is your view of you, which are you a ‘then’ person or a ‘now’? Does it matter? I think it does. The apparent contradiction in all this for me is that I can be very traditional in my thinking… at least at the beginning, it’s a springboard. But it’s more – I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and I believe one can build on the ‘then’ foundation – it isn’t always necessary to reinvent the wheel.
Ok – there were a great number of old ‘saws’ in that paragraph but I’ve noticed that they can provide direction or information or at least stop me long enough to think through what is the best approach. ‘Then’ is our history – good and ‘bad’ – it may or may not impact on ‘Now’ but if we don’t at least consider it then we can find ourselves in a predicament that wasn’t necessary. However, then is never now because the conditions, people, learnings have changed and we can’t always expect then to be now (good or bad).
Now is a clean sheet – never written on, so what we do writes our now. But simply rushing to put something on the page is foolishness. What is now becomes then and is permanent – you can never change then. However, the newness of now is exciting in the possibilities that it presents. So, how do we face our now? With excitement or with trepidation? Probably a bit of both.
How we react to both then and now defines us. And definition is valueless, it merely defines. Who we are now is a reflection of who we’ve been. But we are also more than who we were. Are you being who you want to be? If not, what stops you? Why can’t you be all that you are? You can stop you. You can allow others to stop you. But you also have options, choices. You have been gifted with the present – choose you in your now. This could be the beginning of a new then.
