My friends thought I was obsessed with connecting the dots.   This is the process by which I see an event and see its consequences while the event incubates.  I have a lifetime behind me where I was a veritable Sherlock.   They were unable to see the connections between people or events even when pointed out.

I find the most disconcerting phrase being ‘live in the moment.’  Everything is in the  moment.   Whether it is love, (STD’s or who will take care of the baby disregarded) or a war being declared.  These things are real but their roots are not in the moment but in the many yesterdays.   The moment has no meaning without a yesterday.   If we have no yesterday,  today is sterile, impotent,  without meaning.   It is  a well thought out and lived in yesterday that gives this moment its meaning.   Why do I press this?   If our yesterday was not filled with events that were thought filled,  that were fulfilled,  then yesterday will make this moment null and void.  And those who see dots and make connections are sometimes quick to take advantage of those who do not.

Socrates was filled with advice about putting meaning into our days.   He said that the unexamined life is not worth living.   It is only by remembering the past and chasing our memories that we begin to know who we are and from where we come.  It is only by understanding the past that the present,  the now,  will not have to repeat the past.

Oftentimes and too often it seems,  when it comes to our Earth’s resources,  we mortgage our children’s futures.   We must sit and think about the past,  not only ours but our ancestors.   We must take time to reflect on our behavior and how we contribute to our problems as well as the Earth’s.  What can we do to make the present more commendable?   We make our present richer when we glean from the past those lessons and times that are good memories.   And we learn from the bitter failures what we do not wish to repeat.   Let us thoughtfully include them.   The present moment only has meaning because of what we bring to it.   And if we find our Now empty,  it is best we look within.   We take who we are into tomorrow and find we have within us basis for a future with meaning because we root our present.

We are the gold that shows.

Double click on the photo.   This plaque was a gift from my sister who read The Last Bird Sings and surprised me with this gift.   She read the first manuscript and this impressed her thinking.  It has much meaning for me.