The Past + The Present = The Future

I’ve never been great with names. For some, they seem to be able to absorb names like a sponge to water. I on the other hand require concentrated effort to commit a name to memory, and even then that name has an unreasonable shelf-life of only a few years at best. And so here rests the dilemma. I have lived so many places and known so many people throughout each of those places that the memories fade fast and it is as if those people look more like watercolor painting rather than detailed pencil drawings. In fact I think I could easily pass a lie detector examination pretending that I was an amnesia victim! That is how bad it is now.

Recently I came upon some descriptions of places I lived once in the alternate reality that is my real life (Duluth, MN) and I thought about how I am less than five years away from a twenty year high school reunion. Wow? Get this, that means I have been out of high school for more years than was my age IN high school. On one hand I should hope so, otherwise I would have been one old high school student. On the other hand I can say that I haven’t really been back in way too long.

Here is the think about Duluth, MN. It is the top of the world. And while there are communities that are closer to Canada and the North Pole, Duluth is the kind of place that all people eventually move away from. Some move back I suppose, but everyone moves away, to be certain. Returning to my childhood then would be somewhere between visiting a version of an old home you no longer recognize OR spending time with someone you’ve bumped into whose life just wants to make you cry. I can’t see myself not wanting to go back, but I can’t imagine how I might feel about it.

I mean, I grew up in Florida and frequented Wisconsin (where I was born) throughout my life, but life in Florida was so long ago that it barely counts and Wisconsin is so painful I barely like to go back there in my memories let alone in reality. So Duluth would be the one place left in my imagination where I would want to see old faces (if that were even possible.)
Here is how my mind works. When I am in a place where I once stood long ago a number of thoughts run through me:

1. I think about my time “back in the day,” remembering old stories in a vivid manner only possible with proximity.


2. I think about where I am today, and how much my life has changed, or not.


3. I think about how my world would be different if I had never left.

I’ve known people who for years have lived less than two hours from where they’ve grown up and they hadn’t gone back for a look in multiple decades. I am just not wired that way. I think about the road, both behind me and before me, and how it is shaping me, for good and for bad.

Of those three thoughts that run through me the last though is the hallmark moment. This is where my past bumps into my present and I check my course in life. Am I heading where I want to be heading? Is where I am today better (at least in the right places) than life back then? Am I happy with [a] the decisions I’ve made and [b] my responses to life circumstances that were out of my control? And where do I go from here?

That is the tough inevitable question that comes at the end of reflection. Where do I go from here? Only God knows, and I mean that not in a predestined, predetermined, fate-filled manner. I just mean that it seems that no matter where I go, God is always there ahead of me. Like a loving grandparent sitting by the window waiting for you to arrive, God is already there and sees you coming.