Where Are You Going In The New Year?

By Dr. Synesio Lyra, Jr.

As a new year approaches, pay more attention to the here and now rather than your yesterdays, both good and bad. The

present moment is always with us and it deserves and demands our full allegiance and concentration.

Any person’s best times, days, and seasons are always ahead, never behind. In fact, one’s preferable attitude is to leave the past behind so as to proceed, unencumbered, on the day by day trajectory pre-established for one’s well-being.

Unfortunately, too many people tend to bemoan their past to such an extent that they never make the necessary progress into the future, nor live their present with the excitement it should elicit from them. They complain about things which could have been but were not; places they could have gone, but didn’t; experiences they expected to enjoy, which never came to pass!

There are also those who become paralyzed in the present on account of focusing excessively on a pleasant past which, obviously, can no longer be repeated in anyone’s experience. They look back to the “good ol’ days” as a golden age which can never be improved upon. As a result, they get stuck there, and go nowhere!

All the experiences of yesterday, whether good or bad, should only be viewed as incentives for better living today. They may relate to great accomplishments which can be further advanced in the present, or situations which should no longer have their hold on anyone in a new day!

A person’s laments about the past will never eliminate their reality, nor positively impact one’s present. Likewise, all the good experienced yesterday, all the joys gathered in the past, all the accomplishments which are now behind you won’t make a difference in the now, unless they have a significant bearing on today’s achievements.

A wise man from the distant past once faced with the best earthly life could ever afford to any human, expressed the right perspective, which should also be ours at all times: “Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal…” He had learned to discard both the bad and the good from his former life, so as to concentrate on the best being made available to him in the present and the emerging future.

Thus, instead of complaining about what cannot be recovered, concentrate on where you are going. Focus on what you can more constructively do with what you have now, ever mindful of the additional resources God will provide you for living one day at a time, and moving only in a forward direction. Life must be lived in the present tense; those who insist on a past long gone, and never recoverable, are doomed to be conditioned by it, condemned also to miss the surprises and thrills God intends for one’s joy, each new day!