Again and again.
I think one of Mark Twain’s most interesting writings is the one that talks about living life…. but in reverse. The composition states we should experience life backwards from the age of eighty to the time we were just a sparkle in someone’s eye.
Wouldn’t that be something?
He went on to suggest how much more we would learn, and understand…. if we already knew how to live before we had to. So we would remember experiences before we had to “face” the actual “thing” or “occurrence.”
I think the postulation is quite interesting indeed. That Mark Twain was a real thinker, I’ll tell you.
But the thing of it is… life doesn’t seem to work that way. We wake up, each and every day, not knowing exactly what the day will bring.
So one thing that has been introduced to me … is to take each one of my life experiences… one at a time. If it was a positive thing … I will do it again. And if the experience did not “work” for me… I try not to repeat it.
No. We can’t live backwards. But we can live forward with some knowledge under our belts… more and more each day. Every year we move along in age, experience, perceptiveness, and wisdom. As our years advance, so do we.
So….. sometimes we need to take a brief look backward in order to see this. To notice our growth. Oh…. to keep on living and learning from it… with love in my heart. That may be all I can ask of anything.
Another saying, by Soren Kierkegaard, says, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” More good words. More good wisdom.
And at the end of each day, we lay our heads down to rest. We know it will begin again. Tomorrow and the next day. And the next.
Hopefully, we just keep doing it all better. Again, and again, and again.
“There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” – Tom Krause
“Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley