You ask: Why should I do that? Sounds like a waste of time.
Nope, not at all. Of all your resources for leading a better life, your yesterday is among your most valuable.
Technically speaking, our yesterday began when we were born, but it didn’t begin taking conscious shape until we were maybe three or four years old. That’s when most people begin remembering. By age eighteen, we are well on our way to having much to remember.
The irony, however, is that regardless of how old you are, your yesterday continues to become ever larger. That’s true even if you don’t care what happened before. When you’re young, only the main events seem important to you. As you become old enough to enter the workforce, however, you discover that the nature of your yesterday can well make the difference between what kind of job you get and how much it pays. What you’ve learned up to that point is as valuable to an employer as what you offer for the future.
Neither is that point lost on parents. They are always comparing what you were with what you are becoming. Indeed, that feeling never stops. Good parents continue to monitor your progress throughout life. No matter how old you become, you will forever be their child.
This is a good time to acknowledge what’s so obvious that it blows past most people. That is, yesterday is the only thing that’s permanent and absolute in your life. Everything else is a possibility, probability, or nothing at all. And for sure, yesterday can’t be changed. Whatever was and happened is an irrefutable and irreplaceable fact.
A lot of people either ignore that fact or stub their toe on it, insist that something did or didn’t happen, or if it did, the result was just the opposite of what really happened. Worse yet, they judge yesterday not by what was known or believed at that time, but rather by what those values are now. Surely you realize everything leading away from that false belief is going to either be badly distorted or just plain false.
That brings up this important point: How you remember yesterday is often much different from reality. When it comes to accurate remembering, the brain can play tricks on you. Talk to anyone who has kept a daily journal over a period of several years, and they will explain how you can be absolutely sure of what happened, only to discover from what was written at the time that it didn’t happen that way at all. If you don’t have a written record, it’s always smart to tell others that what you are about to tell them is the way you remember it.
If you are in your forties or fifties, you have already amassed a lot of yesterdays and put into play what they taught you. Each time that happens, you’re hearing the voice of what once was your future.
The truth is, while the future is what everyone wants to talk about and prepare for, it is a complete unknown. It would be that way even if you had full control over your own actions because you have no control over anything, not even your own body. Only when the future flashes by to become your past, do you realize what it was.
If you are in your sixties and seventies, your yesterdays take on a new importance, tell you to what extent you succeeded or failed at being what you wanted or attempted to become. In either direction, however, there is good. If you succeeded, you can relish what you had to overcome to make it happen. If you failed, you can take comfort in knowing you made the effort even if it didn’t turn out right.
Or maybe you must sorrowfully admit that not only were you not successful, but none of it worked out. Logic, however, did work in your favor and here’s why: Just as a successful person sets the example of what does work, so will you set an equally valuable example of what doesn’t.
Not only that, consider that at least you were born even if you wish you hadn’t been. That’s when faith takes over—believing our mortal life is merely one of several stepping stones leading to something much greater and more grand. You stumble when you step on one, you stand firm when you step on another.
The takeaway? Every instant of your entire life, whether good, bad, or indifferent, you are witnessing the uncertain and unknown future of your life being converted to your absolute and unquestionable past.
Therein lies both the quest and the adventure.
