A sudden realization struck me the other day, and by sudden I mean out of nowhere, and by struck me I mean someone wiser than myself (not hard to be) sat me down, and explained it to me much like you explain Lego monsters to a two year old. I would imagine that your average two year old's attention span and mine are about the same length, and I would also figure that the two year old would have been quicker on the uptake about this realization than I was.
That brilliant piece of mentoring provided me with the knowledge that all of our yesterdays are rolled into today. The today I am currently experiencing, which has been as dull as watching paint dry, is the end product of all the yesterdays that came before it. All the left rather than right (in more ways than one) turns that I have made in my life have led me to this exact point in time. I understand that the universe is really, really, really big, and somewhere the odds of 'another' me having a much different, and for his sake I hope better, life are quite high. But for me, for right now, all of my yesterdays have led me here. This point in time, which is rapidly passing me by, is only one point in time at which I could have arrived. All the victories, defeats, and draws that I have inflicted, or had inflicted upon me have led me to this point.
This point, whatever it may be, isn't really something that I could have foreseen, because if I could have it is more likely than not I would have taken one of those aforementioned 'right' turns that I blew past like a damn fool on the road to perdition. This point in the comedy known as my life could always be worse. After all, I have access to (more) than enough calories to keep me alive, I have shelter over my head, and a warm (or cool depending on the season) place to sleep. The fact of the matter is that this point in time, this today, that I have, for the most part, wasted isn't as bad as it could have been. Of course, neither is it as good as it could have been. Those left turns, and all the attending road signs so blithely ignored have led me to this point where the 'good' things in my life are food, shelter, and a job.
All of those things are important, and I am lucky, considering what I have to work with, to have them but at some point, usually when one is bored to tears like I have been today, one has to look around at their so-called life and wonder if perhaps one has peaked. At a certain age, life becomes more of an anchor rather than a sail, and starts to drag a bit, and starts to slow down, or at least you start to slow down. Because life has piled a whole lot of yesterdays on top of you, and they are getting harder and harder to carry into today, not to mention tomorrow, which will be even heavier. All of those yesterdays that contains all the decisions, good, bad, or indifferent that you have made, start to pile up, and they even include decisions made about you by other people. You are not, no matter how hard you try, an island. You are not alone in time, you are one of many people, place, and/or things in an really, really, really big universe, and that universe has batted you around like a kitten with a newly wound ball of yarn.
Those yesterdays creep up on you, sometimes when you least expect it. You are minding what appears to be your own business when the universe decides that your today isn't interesting enough. To combat that, the universe allows you to have memories, and then allows, or forces you to sometimes relive one of those yesterdays just for fun. The universe is like that, it needs to have its fun, and a certain amount of it is going to be had at your expense whether you like it or not. You don't control the universe, the universe controls you. The sooner you learn THAT life lesson the better off you will be, because somethings you just have to accept. I suppose that is why acceptance is a stage of grief, and one of the latter ones. Acceptance, of your fate at least, can sometimes be a large pill to swallow.
The problem that my wiser friend explained to me as simply as they could so I would understand it, happened quite a few yesterdays ago. It wasn't a yesterday that I was proud of, and it was more than one day, but they were all of a piece. A bit like an episode in the series of my life. A plot device that had, I thought, been resolved one way, but (as usual) I was wrong. The problem had been resolved, but not quite in the way that I had figured. The knowledge that was given to me made it a little bit easier to understand some of my yesterdays, and even helped a little with today, but all of that wisdom can't 'fix' the problem. The problem remains, whether I like it or not, because the problem isn't something that has gone away, it is just moved forward in time. It is something that I seem to be, and have been deemed, incapable of fixing, and that is the sad part of this tale. No matter how many more yesterdays I have to live, I just can't seem to learn from them. And a person that can't learn from his or her yesterdays, in many ways doesn't deserve a tomorrow.
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