Trace Adkins said it best: Time goes by wayyy too quickly. Anyone that knows me knows I love to reminisce. I could spend hours reliving funny moments with friends. I somehow always find an old story to relate to whatever is currently happening in my life. Every inch of my dorm wall is covered in pictures. I save all my school projects, and TimeHop is probably my favorite app on my phone. As great as it is to enjoy remembering, some people say that focusing too much on the past takes away our ability to truly enjoy the “now,” but I don’t think that’s really true.
We love thinking about good times in the past for a reason; they were good times. Be it your first trip to Disney World, or the weekend you spent at the Jersey Shore with your entire graduating class or your mission trip to Guatemala with your best friends, they were all awesome parts of your life. In those moments, you were filled with pure joy. When you remember them you get a taste of that joy again. You can taste the Guatemalan coffee, you can hear your teammates yelling from the sideline of the lacrosse field, you can feel the warmth of your grandpa’s hug.
You feel the emotions you felt while you were there. Sometimes I literally start laughing out loud when I think about funny things that have happened in my life. Whatever memories you like to relieve, relieve them as much as you want. Print out as many old pictures as your heart desires. Tell your new friends stories about your old friends until they get so sick of them they ask you to stop. Because once you stop thinking about these memories, they start to fade, and they’re too valuable to lose. So hold on to them tightly.
The people that do “live in the past” know the value of a moment. We know that our present will one day become our past. The moments we are living right now will be the ones we are reliving a year, five years, even ten years from now. They’ll be what we tell our kids and grandkids about. The pictures we take today will be on our walls next year. The memories we make now will be the ones we look back on as we move onto the next chapter in our lives. So we make these moments special. We don’t care about the past so much that we ignore our present. We care about the past so much that it makes makes us want to make our present amazing. We want it to be even better than our memories. We want to make memories we want to relive over and over. So don’t tell me that I need to “close the yearbook” or “forget about back then.” My love for my past shows my appreciation for it. I’m thankful for the lessons I’ve learned, the people I’ve met, the experiences I’ve had, and the accomplishments I’ve achieved. And even if your past wasn’t great, if you have parts of it you rather not remember, don’t completely bury them. Don’t act like they never happened. Use them as encouragement to make your present so great that your new past will be something worthy of remembering.
So the next time someone tries to make you feel guilty for not “living in the moment” realize that you are not neglecting your present. You’re still living each day to its fullest, still making every minute count. You’re enjoying the “now” and the “then.” So snap that picture and write in that journal, because these are the moments you’ll never want to forget.
