Yesterday and tomorrow

As I feel the prompt coming in, I am overcome by a sense of helplessness, or maybe powerlessness. I cannot change yesterday, and I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. All I have is today. I feel myself starting to grasp for all the things I was encouraged to let go of in our intro. Maybe one of them will help me regain my balance.

I have had many yesterdays. So many of them, I can’t remember at all, others I can only see through a deeply distorted lens, giving them a fun-house mirror quality. But there are a few that I can remember very clearly, or at least through a familiar lens. Others might remember differently. The day I met Michelle I can describe more distinctly than I could describe today, and I know it colors my tomorrows in beautiful ways that I can’t wait to discover.

But more often, what I remember are my failures, my humiliations. Success, it seems, is to be expected, and is therefore unmemorable. But failure gets a spotlight, a post-mortem, a special guest appearance by the Shame Wizard. And still it remains secret, something I can’t or won’t share, for fear that it will repeat.

Tomorrow is filled with hope, but also potential letdown. Both are possible, probably in equal measure. Can I find the resolve to meet either fate – or any other that might arise – with love and appreciation? I can only hope.