This was considered the theme, motto sounds better in my opinion, of my yearbook the year I graduated high school. I remember seeing those words emblazoned across the front cover and scoffing my first thought being “who thinks up this crap”.
I for one wasn’t considering looking back in fact I recall thinking that I had absolutely no intention of ever looking back. Those days would be done and my plan was to never stop looking forward. I didn’t have the happiest of school years nor did I have the worst and it is only with experience that I’ve realized it.
As time went by and my school years became further and further behind me I lost much of the early cynicism that I’d had towards those years and I found that sometimes in the natural course of life that you had to look back. It also become apparent to me that taking a glance over my shoulder from time to time in no way prevented me from staying focused on looking forward the other 99% of the time.
Perhaps I realized that by denying those looks back was kin to denying who I am and where I came from. That wasn’t the intention behind the original thought, that I would not look back, but was an apparent by-product of that mind-set.
We can’t nor should we leave it all behind.
Our lives and everything good, bad or in-between which happens to us must be embraced as a part of us, a part of our memories, before looking forward can be done with strength and conviction. To accept it, forgive those who wronged us, admit to our own mistakes and look back at our lives with the new perspectives which are gained with each years knowledge is vital to looking forward.
So now I am looking forward to looking back from time to time....I still think the phrasing sound kind of stupid though.
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| My graduating class on the steps of the Manitoba Legislative. I'm on the bottom row farthest to the left in blue. |
