Holding On

I've had some time to reflect over the past few days, on a lot.  What it mostly comes down to is holding on.

Everyone in life grasps on to something.  Some people hold on to love, to goals, to certain periods in life, to hope.  It doesn't really matter what it is, the point is that we all do it.  And isn't it funny the things we choose to hold on to?



I'm a person who likes control, and likes the known.  I don't do well "flying by the seat of my pants," if you will.  Letting go and seeing where life takes me is thought that terrifies me to no end.  So, I hold on to what I know, and sadly what I know means things that have already come to pass.

But, on a drive home from picking up this years Christmas cards, Collide came on the radio.  There are so many songs from my past, most of which I've let go and hardly give any thought to if I hear them.  Sometimes I don't even remember that they held a significance.  This one, however, will probably always stay with me.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't live and breath by this song.  I don't hang on to its every moment.  I don't find it on my play list and listen to it over and over until I'm a sobbing emotional wreck.  However, whenever it happens to play, my mind takes a walk and winds up in years that I felt safe.  Years where life didn't feel so unknown (even though life is ALWAYS unknown).  It winds up in a time where life was simple.

 In that moment of getting caught up in my past I had a moment of realization of some other people I know who are caught up in theirs.

In that moment I found myself judging.  And, of course, who am I to judge, really?  That's not the job of man, though we're all guilty of it.  I found myself thinking "How can this person ever move on to the next chapter of their life, that they want so desperately, when they're clinging so hard to the chapter that came before?  That they won't let go.  They're trying to carry where they have been into where they're going."

While we're always told to not live in the past, and to embrace the future...for some people with a type A personality like me, it's not always that easy.  And I feel like I'm a little late jumping on board this epiphany train, however late is better than never, right?

Life is supposed to change, and in order for us to become the person we were designed to be, we need to change with it.  I've been having a hard time with change over the past year and a half.  It seems everything in my life that could change has decided to.  But, perhaps the only way I can manage to get through it is to change with it.  It's not per se this song and what it holds that I'm hanging on to, but the fact that it represents such a simpler time.  I hang on to the safe, what I know the outcome of.  And by hanging on to what I know, it makes me know so much less about the present.  I'm expecting outcomes based on who people previously were, and it's leaving me disappointed because nothing is as "it's supposed to be."

I'm not even sure why I felt the need to put my ramblings on "paper."  Perhaps this is meant to help someone else who was stuck where I am.  Sometimes if the same material is just presented in a different way, everything seems to click.

So, instead of telling you not to hold on to your past, or to embrace the future, or to tell you that holding on to anger and hurt is only hurting you and not the person you're mad at... I'll leave you with my epiphany.

If the past was supposed to be part of your future, it wouldn't be your past.