“A Blast From the Past”
I work in a profession which is very much about helping my clients improve their present mindset and situation and focus on how they will move forward into the future. It is work that provides me great deal of satisfaction, particularly when I see my clients achieve those next steps or opportunities in their lives. However, I must admit that I have spent time in these last few years thinking a lot about my people and events in my past.
I am thinking what triggered those thoughts were some of the following stimuli. For one, I realize I am getting older. Over the past couple of years, I have crossed the major threshold of being older than 65 years of age. When I was very young, that age was seen as reaching “the final frontier” of your life. While I know that has changed significantly, with many people working into their 70’s and 80’s, and even striking out in new directions, it still is a milestone. For one you become eligible for Medicare health coverage. For another, the medical community “officially designates” you as “elderly.” If you disagree with that designation, (and I am not saying you have to mindset wise accept the designation), note that every medical warning that comes out indicating those who are most vulnerable are “the elderly,” it is quickly followed by defining that as 65 years of age or older.
Another reason that has me thinking a lot about past events and those in my life is the world itself. Certainly, the world from which I came did not have as much divisiveness as the world of today appears to have as part of it. While I am sure there were those who did not get along with each other, or disagreed with each other on their views, it did not seem to be as prevalent as it seems to me in today’s world. Media, its presence, and its abundance I realize have a great deal to do with that. However, I feel that another cause, that cannot be overlooked, are changing values and norms. Beyond those changing values and norms, however, is a desire to make one’s value “the standard” that are then “forced” on others as the way they should live their life. And, that is what began triggering my thinking.
I thought about my own values. Where had they come from? When I really thought about it, I realized that a good many of them went fundamentally back to the things I learned from my father and my mother. That I was still living them all these years later, must have been because they not only made sense to me, but helped me to enjoy how I was living my life. In fact, I realize now at the age that I am at, that I did not always give my dad and mom the appreciation they deserved for instilling the values that I live my life by today in me.
When I extended my thought process further, I realized that those values transcended into my home town which was blue-collar working-class individuals, many of whom I am still close with today. While I still do not live in the town in which I grew up I am back there frequently, as my medical providers, hairstylist, pharmacist, and many other services of which I use as part of my life are there. Could I have changed them when I moved from the area? Yes, I could have. Why did I not do so? I was comfortable with them, (and in many ways grateful they are still in business), because we connected in a way that worked best for me and who I am as an individual.
The list goes on and on. From the radio station I listen to, (which has music from the periods I was growing up through my early 20’s and 30’s years of age), to the YouTube videos I may check out which are clips from television shows I used to watch, to the fact that I still practice the same religion and continually with my father’s reminder in my mind to go to Mass every Sunday (no matter how well or poorly things were going for me), my past actually helps me to live in my present and move forward into the future. It is the basis for the individual that my clients, friends, those whom I newly meet and appear to not only like but appreciate for the way I interact with them and help them. What are the strengths from your past that you are using as part of your life today, likely always used in your most enjoyable moments, and you want to stay a part of you as you move forward on your life’s journey?
