DAY 80 – A FRESH AND NEW BEGINNING: TOMORROW DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LIKE YESTERDAY

When I was a kid I would like to go to an amusement park and my favorite ride was the merry-go-round. At the time I thought it was the greatest thing in the world to sit on one of the stationary horses as it went up and down with the ride going in a circle. I would do this over and over again.

While I have had many pleasant moments during the course of my life certain things have occurred that have made me think that I am on a merry-go-round of unwanted problems. When a specific problematic situation developed it would go away and after some time it would come back again. Other specific problems would pop up and they too would be resolved only to find myself reliving what I do not want to happen. Just like the merry-go-round goes in a circle and I am sitting on a stationary horse that goes up and down so too do the problems that I have to contend with come full circle with me living my life as if I am in a stationary position having to continuously deal with the unwanted.

When life presents itself with too many personal difficulties that never seem to end human beings want to get off of the merry-go-round of problems. While wanting to get off this merry-go-round is one thing, repeating the same behaviors will always get the same results. Eventually an insight develops that a fresh and new beginning is required before any real and lasting changes can occur.

Our thought habits keep behavioral habits alive. Any first time difficulty that turns into an ongoing situation requires similar thoughts and behaviors to keep it alive. Having a determination that tomorrow does not have to be like yesterday can be a powerful tool in changing around any lasting negative situation. There is nothing set in stone that says the yesterdays that no one wants to have will be the tomorrows that a person dreads.

While repetitive difficulties can be draining upon any individual so too can ongoing societal problems be a burden upon the citizenry of entire communities. There are issues in life that every generation has to deal with and they have a great impact upon those who are living through it. No group of people is immune to the overarching difficulties of their fellow members of a nationality, religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation who have to go through something on a group wide scale.

When entire groups of people decide that there is no inevitability to the yesterdays that no one wants to have and that tomorrow will not be like the yesterdays all of us have had to live through then concrete actions can occur to change the world for the better. New individual beliefs can become part of the societal norm and new behaviors that enrich all of our lives will then be commonplace. It may seem hard to see this on a huge scale but changing life for the better in the past has always required a new and fresh beginning for the people of that era.

As I remember all of the ups and downs of my life I now realize that every positive change that I incorporated into my life required a new and fresh beginning from what I was experiencing. My life today is so much better because I could envision a time where my tomorrows would be better than the problematic yesterdays.