Letting Go of the Past to Realize Tomorrow’s Dreams

The worst part of letting go of something with which you have become familiar is 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 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 move on from 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 – the emptiness growing within you when that which was is no more cannot be easily filled. Life drifts freely without point or purpose as one seeks a return to a comfortable past when what you had slips through your fingers – yet such a return is often an improbable dream. What once was can rarely return and what now is must become the foundation of all things yet to come. 

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 once occupied – you may never understand the emptiness that comes from letting go of a dream. Hope may remain within a visionary soul but the emptiness that fills an individual when separated from a dream – or when forced into an unexpected reality – often takes more patience and tolerance – more hard work and sweat equity – than most are willing to invest EVEN IF it might mean a moment of reunification. When Hope is gone, life takes on the deathly pallor of a pale and drawn 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 – as you struggle to survive (with no thought of ever again thriving). 

When you must move on – which is something we all face within this life (whether it be personally or professionally) – we must look towards where we are going rather than dwell upon where we have been. We must seek new horizons rather than finding sordid comfort within the memories of our past. While understandable from an emotional standpoint, rarely is a new beginning found within the remnants or wreckage of one's irretrievable accomplishments. We must embrace change as an opportunity to excel rather than seeing it as a blockade that makes our once “comfortable path” impassable. Though a career change may not be what we wanted, accept the opportunity that “downsizing” presents to succeed at something new and different  should it come. Rather than seeing disruptive and unexpected change as being an end, it COULD be a beginning. Retirement should be “to” something rather than “away” from it...running away from what you have may eliminate an undesirable situation but leaves an unanticipated void in front of us rather than a temporary gap into which we might confidently reach to begin that which has not yet materialized. An empty nest should be filled with freedoms rather than with the stray feathers left behind by something that will never be again. Life “as it was” should become a springboard into the future rather than a safe haven from “what could be”. 

Whether they be voluntary or out of necessity, life provides us with new realities which will either prove to be our beginning or our end. Accepting challenges as inevitable – recognizing that the only constant in life is change – will help us let go of “what was” in order to truly seek “what will be.” Until you are able to take control of your destiny by walking from what was in order to run towards what has yet to be – by moving forward with confidence as you find yourself shrouded within the darkness of an unknown future – your past will control your life and you will never realize the dream that can be found ONLY within the not-yet-defined reality of your future. Let go of your past as you hold on to your future, reaching out from where you are towards what you have not yet become, in order to ultimately realize your dreams.