“You can’t go back and change the beginning…”
C.S. Lewis once said “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” I found this quote on Facebook one day, and thought how much this actually applies today.
Now, you know I don’t like to write political columns, and this is not entirely a political column. However, this directly applies to the state of our country and relations to each other, so I will touch on it first. I hear man people fussing about how slavery was wrong and we need to acknowledge that by removing items that are offensive due to their ties to the slave era. Well, if we remove history, and don’t talk about it because it offends certain segments of the population, isn’t that trying to go back and change the past?
I mean, the majority of people offended by cotton, or slavery, or a statue of a Southern general, or anything else from that time period, never picked cotton, or was a slave in their lifetime. By the same token, the majority of the people today who support the idea of being Southern have never owned slaves, so what good does it do to go back and try to “correct” what our ancestors did wrong? I mean, wouldn’t be easier and more beneficial for everyone if we just all decided to move forward with being good people and making sure we don’t repeat the past?
Even more than a global meaning behind Lewis’ thought, I feel that this could be a life quote for each of personally. We all have things in our past that we are less than proud of. We all have things we would rather forget. I am not saying to forget our past, for we must have our past to become our future. However, we spend so much time locked in the past because of what we feel we should have done differently that we end up continue in that circle. It has been proven that many people who grow up in abusive relationships continue either being abused or become an abuser when they are older. Why is that? It is because we are constantly trying to “correct”” our past.
When large cruise ships set forth on their planned routes, the smallest change can cause a large change in their desitination. If the captain sees a slight variation in their course that is not needed, he does not turn the ship around and return to the beginning. He instead begins from where he is and corrects the future course. It is the same with our lives. We must use the past as our guide, but correct our course from where we are right now.
What if, instead of trying to correct our personal pasts, we set in our minds to move forward to make a better future? We can never truly change our beginning. But we can correct our course and ensure a good ending.
