Friday, December 31, 2010

Keep Going and Don't Look Back ~

This is officially the last day of the year, tomorrow will be 2011. For the past couple of years I have made a timeline and posted all of the good (and some not so good) things that have happened throughout the year. I can truly say that this has been one of the toughest years for me to get through. I'm sad that the year is over only because I wanted it to end on a great note and time ran out too soon. So, instead of posting all of God knows what, I've decided that this time I'm going to look mostly forward instead of back. 
I've heard a lot of great sayings about not looking back, putting things in the past, moving forward. They aren't just words that someone said on a whim. I would be willing to bet that most of them came about because of an experience someone had that they wish they hadn't. Here are a few of them: 

"One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us."  ~Michael Cibenko"Waste not fresh tears over old griefs." ~Euripides, Alexander


"Would you keep a chive on your tooth just because you enjoyed last night's potato?" ~From the television show Boston Common


"The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post." ~L. Thomas Holdcroft
"It's but little good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops." ~George Eliot, Adam Bede


"Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way."  ~Edna Ferber


"If you have one eye on yesterday, and one eye on tomorrow, you're going to be cockeyed today."  ~Author Unknown


"Our past is like a footprint.  It only confirms we were there.  No burden on our future does it bear."  ~Jeb Dickerson


"Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
The last one is my favorite and, Oh how I wish I could live it every day! Ralph Waldo Emerson was actually rephrasing something that had been said many years before, whether he knew it or not.
Philippians 3:13

"I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before..."
So 2010 is another year gone by. It's time to move on and plan for the future, reach for the things that are ahead. My one New Year's Resolution is that I would not spend all of my time struggling and working but that I would spend more of it with my family and friends, doing things that matter. Nurture my relationship with God. Participate in more events that are worthy of picture-taking. Make new friends. Visit old friends. Smell the roses. Enjoy the coffee. Don't give people more of me than they deserve. Say NO. Say YES! Get caught up in some things. Get over some things. Get a hold on some things. Let go of regrets. Forget the past and move on

~ Welcome 2011! ~