Balaji Prasad
By Balaji Prasad
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” ~ Mark Twain
The future can look dark and mysterious. That should not be surprising, because it is a place you have never been to, and a place that you are not currently at.
But the future is not a place that you are able to put out of your mind: It keeps cropping up dimly and amorphously, in incoherent bits and pieces that don’t fit together neatly. Nor do these will-o’-the-wisps stay stable, appearing as shiny teasers sometimes and, at times, like an abysmal abyss that threatens to inhale you whole.
And, of course, you wouldn’t want to put the future out of your mind too! For you will live there, for sure. For that is the way of the living: to never think of not living to see another day.
If you are both doomed and driven to think about the future, would you rather not ponder it in the most productive and useful way? But before having a chance of doing that effectively, you would want to reflect on the present, for that is where the future branches out from. And, even before that, the past, which has left its indelible imprints on the present.
The past has passed
Like the future, the past doesn’t really exist, except in the interstices of your infinite mind. And because the human mind doesn’t necessarily draw unduly sharp distinctions between real things that do exist and the shadows of things that existed once, we may feel the past much more than we might want to.
Is it unhelpful to think of the past as real? No, because something like the past can exist again today. You ate your dinner yesterday, and you are eating your dinner today: the two events are not radically different. As you do simple things such as this repeatedly, your past often serves as a great mentor for your present.
However, the past can be a great source of dogma and indoctrination as well, intruding actively into your ability to deal effectively with the present, especially where the present has made a break with the past in some significant manner. For example, you may be required to do some things in the present that you may not have needed to do in the past. You may be driven by circumstances and objectives today that are very different from those of the past. If you are not aligned to the current pressures but are instead a slave to the habits and behaviors that served you well in a different time, you will be operating in a world that no longer exists and be left wondering why you always go off-key when you try to sing the song of your life.
The present is the only thing present
Today is the day! There is this, and nothing more.
Today is unlike the past, except for the things and people that have traveled the arc of time along with you from the past. They may be similar in some ways but may also vary somewhat. Just as you are not exactly the same today, as you were yesterday, or the day before. So today may not repeat yesterday: it may rhyme with it, or it may simply be its own brand-new thing.
Regardless of today’s similarity or divergence from the past, there is one thing that is undeniable: you can hold it in your hand, touch it, feel it, interact with it, shape it and take it where you have the opportunity to take it.
Opportunity! That’s the key. Some say that the opportunities are unlimited. While that is technically untrue – the universe doesn’t make everything possible – it is notionally in the right direction. For, you are more likely to see incorrect limits on what you can do than you are to engage with fictitious infinities. The limits you see may be because of the persistence of the past, and the assumptions, patterns and habits therefrom.
The ball and chain from the past must be cut loose, if you are to realize the opportunities that are present in the present. But it is not just you that may need to free yourself from the past. If there are others around you, as there always are in our human lives, they too may need to let go of things from the past, especially as it relates to their view of you.
Letting go of the past is not as difficult as it may seem because the present is undiscounted unlike the past. It is present in its full glory, intoxicating the senses far more than the past is ever capable of doing. So, as long as you intoxicate the people from your past with your reborn presence in the present, they will move with you to where you are. With things, there is no such issue. Things don’t think and they don’t carry past baggage. And, as you flex and mold and shape them to your will, they will bend.
That’s all fine, but what about the future!? That will wait for another day. In the meantime, the present beckons; we need to answer its call.
Balaji Prasad is an IIT/IIM graduate, a published author, SAT/ACT Online and in-person Coach, and K-12 Math Tutor at NewCranium. [email protected]
