Where is Your Past

Wrote a post yesterday which I ultimately discarded for the one which sits right below this one. This will make the third time in nearly six months of blogging I have done this.

Both the original post and the replacement version are strongly linked with music. That is because I am strongly linked to music. Oh, I don't play (or sing) well enough to suit anyone. But how I love to listen to music when it touches me at my heart-of-hearts. It is then I am transported through time and space to other times and other places. If I am not careful I can be quite overwhelmed by my new surroundings, or old, as the case may be.

That's what happened yesterday. I found myself back in the 1970s, for it was 1970s music I was hearing. The sentiment of certain songs brought me back in confrontation with moments of great joy and great sorrow, and I was overwhelmed. You see, my past is not so far away from me as perhaps it should be.

I'm listening to Hello, by Lionel Ritchie. It's part of all that went on - way back then. Today I am not so susceptible to the journey. My guards are up. Spoken with a friend and garnered strength. That's what life's about, isn't it? Friends. Loves. Those we care about and who care about us?

Our lives are a series of splashes in a pond. Events, both good and bad, happy and sad, fill our lives like a hailstorm. Some make bigger splashes than others, and their ripples spread out through the time of our lives, affecting all they touch as we age. But all ripples fade in time. Or they should.

Endles Love, by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross.

So how is it that so many ripples from my youth still beat against the shores of my present as though fresh from the first impact? Am I so different than others?

I used to think so. Twenty years ago and more. I would see people move through life as though unstained with the things I had endured. I believed them to be free of my pain. Some were, perhaps. But most knew it quite well. They just learned to walk the shores of now and cease to allow the waves from the past to greatly affect their journey. How?

Truly, by Lionel Ritchie.

Perhaps it's wisdom. They others know the dangers of exploring the depths of that original impact into the waters. Dive too deep and the weighted pressure of thoughts and feelings which came before push one down to the very bottom, making the past one's present.

Maybe that's what's happened to me. I've dove into the deeps of past pain and explored the subterranean caves wherein coulds, and shoulds, and ifs haunt, lurking for the unwise passerby to take as a meal.

Stuck on You, by Lionel Ritchie.

Kind of Lionel Ritchie day, I guess. At the time I never paid it any mind that he so touched me soul. Don't mind. Thirty years later I find I still like the music.

Others swim the surface, searching out new horizons. I walk the depths, stumbling from deep to deep, suffocating from the bad air. Occasionally, I found someone who would lift me up where I could take in the cool, crisp air of the surface. But when left to myself again, I would sink back down to the bottom, only to find it deeper than ever before.

Easy, by Lionel Ritchie.

Yesterday was a bit different. Yes, it was my new friend(s) who were the source of my strength to reclaim the surface waters of my past, but the hand I held was imaginary. I did not physically seek it out until after I broke free. The power of friendship is the power of life.

So, while it is still mine to relish, I shall look to the horizon and seek new shores to visit. The depths will always be there, and they will take me when they will. Until then, I hope you are enjoying this day, be it the day I wrote this or some other.

I'm easy. Right? Listen to the song. It's here on the surface as well as in the depths.

And to the love which went before and now swims in some other sea and walks some other shore, I am sorry. Still and always. For the little it's worth, my love still abides.

Take care. But do not worry about me. I have new friends now.

I breathe the fresh air of happiness again.

Say You Say Me, by Lionel Ritchie.