Blog 98 – 8.19.15

Sometime back I posted a blog entitled Yesterday. I wrote of how much a song of that name written and sung by Paul McCartney, of the Beatles, had meant to me as a boy. It is a sad love song about a lost love haunting a young man. Many a not so young person is still haunted by yesterday. I have a healthier yesterday song lyric for you.

It comes from the Carpenter’s song called Only Yesterday.

Only yesterday when I was sad
And I was lonely
You showed me the way to leave
The past and all its tears behind me.
Tomorrow may be
Even brighter than today
Since I threw my sadness away
Only yesterday.

One of the great secrets to happiness is “Letting go of yesterday.” Some things, people, and dreams are hard for us to let go. I think a good formula for determining which memories to keep on our Play List is something I lift out of context, but not really, from one of the Apostle Paul’s more encouraging words to the Philippians in Chapter 4 verse 8. “Whatsoever things are lovely think on these things.” Paul uses a lot of other words in addition to lovely to describe his thought playlist but to me lovely is the highest and best qualification. Lovely, loving, lovable, are all just variations on the same theme. And that theme is what we should think on not pain and misery and loss from our past. Yesterday is gone. Shame on us if we feel we have to carry it around like a heavy wooden cross to prove to ourselves what martyrs we are.

At the risk of offending some of you it does no honor to the loved and the lost to continually place flowers on their graves and spend the rest of your life on hold mourning an Unfinished Life. There is only one unfinished life and that is yours. Oh, sure it hurts to say “See you later” to a dear family member or friend especially a parent or a child but no matter how cheated you feel they were or you are the truth is: “Life goes on with you or without you.” We ought to celebrate life. If your memories of the beloved make you sad you need to come up with a better play list. And by all means quit listening to all those what I call Tears In My Beer Songs. I am thinking of a classic country song in that tradition about a man who goes to the bar every night picks the same ole stool, the same ole fool, feeds the juke box, plays the same ole song, fills his glass, and turns her memory on. What a sad waste of a life. Mercy, let go of the past and get on with living. As Monte Hall used to say, “There are bigger deals ahead.”

One of my favorite songs from the seventies, I think, is Teach You Children Well. One line in particular comes to mind right now. “Because the past is just a good bye.” Say good bye to the past. As long as you cling to yesterday you forfeit not only today but all of your tomorrows. And remember, “Tomorrow may be even brighter than today since I threw my sadness away, only yesterday.”

Make the most of today and tomorrow by not allowing yourself to become a prisoner of the past, stuck in that awful loop thinking what might have been if only… The best is truly yet to be but we close the door on all that if we think our best days are past.

Your friend and fellow traveler enjoying today and looking forward to a brighter tomorrow,
David White