FACING CHANGE - LET GO OF THE PAST BUT HOLD ON TO YOUR DREAMS

The worst parts of letting go of something with which you have become familiar are watching it pass through your fingers and worrying about whether it will ever return. When something that has become more important to your life than the very air you breathe floats away upon the wind – dancing just out of reach but never out of mind – you need to work relentlessly to retrieve it or seek intentionally to replace it. Regardless of how much you try to rationalize that what once was may never be again – that perhaps it should never have been in the first place – does not fill the emptiness growing within your heart when that which was is no more. Life drifts freely through the meadows of your soul seeking a return to its comfortable past when what you had slips through your hands – yet such a return is often an improbable dream.

Until you let something go – knowing that you will never again experience the stability it provided nor the comfort you found within the place you had found – you will never understand the emptiness that comes from letting go of a dream. Hope will remain, however, within the heart of a visionary soul. The emptiness that engulfs an individual when separated from a dream – or from a present reality – allows for the celebration of moments when reunited. When Hope is gone, life takes on the deathly pallor of a spirit drifting aimlessly with the wind. Without Dreams, reality can become a millstone holding you down – a weight keeping you from realizing your potential or moving towards the accomplishment of unfulfilled goals.

When you must move on – which is a reality we all face within this life (whether it be personally or professionally) – we must look to where we are going rather than dwell upon where we have been. We must seek new horizons rather than finding comfort in the dark of our past. We must embrace change as an opportunity to excel rather than seeing it as a blockade that makes our “comfortable path” impassable. Though a job change may not be what we wanted, accept the opportunity that “downsizing” presents should it come. One should retire “to” something rather than “away” from it – never running away from what you have but rather reaching for that which has not yet materialized. An empty nest should be filled with freedoms rather than with the knowledge that something “that was” will be no more. Life “as it was” should become a springboard into the future rather than a place to hide from “what could be”.

Whether they be voluntary or out of necessity, life provides us with many opportunities to create new realities. Accepting these challenges as inevitable – recognizing that the only constant in life is change – will allow us to let go of “what was” in order to grasp “what will be.” Until you are able to truly take control of your destiny by walking from what was in order to run towards what has yet to be – your past that will control your life and you will never reach the dream that holds your future reality. Let go (of your past) as you hold on (to your dreams) so you can reach out towards a future that has yet to be realized.