I don't know how I got here, and I don't know where I'm going. I just know that I am.
I have recently come to understand just how much the past is like a prison, a solitary cell looking out through bars onto a neverending hallway towards the future - with the key sitting right in front of you. An infinite future. Anything is possible. All I have to do is unlock the door and start walking, one step at a time.
Yet too often I find myself projecting my past onto that future. Instead of unlocking that door and allowing the unlimited potential of the future to unfold, I sit there and imagine what the future would look like were I not locked in this cell. I build myself into a beautiful ivory tower in the sky, atop which I lock myself in a remarkably similar cell - only it looks nicer, the bed is a little bit more comfortable and the food a bit more palitable. The only real difference is that the key is always sitting just beyond reach, just a little further on down the hallway.
But the past does not have to be a prison, I have the key in front of me, I can choose to interpret my past in any way I choose to leaving it behind as I walk forward, one step at a time towards the future. It is up to me to embrace it and not lock myself into what I think should be.
I've come to realize that there is only one real way to do this. To pick up the key, unlock the door and take one step at a time, living in the present and seeing everything for what it really is. The present, ironically is the only state in which we can do nothing, and yet paradoxically the only state in which we are truly free.It is the purist state of all. The present just is, and I am starting to realize that the acceptance of what 'just is' is the key to true joy and happiness. True happiness cannot be found in the past, nor the future, it only lies in the present, in utter love and acceptance of what is, without question and without judgment.