Don't Freeze the Past: Embrace Today!

Don't Freeze in the Past: Embrace Today!

It's holiday time and in regular form I travelled back to Minnesota for a wedding, my cousin David's wedding. I wound around Highway 35, sliced through St. Paul on 90 and then swung through White Bear and Vadnais Heights and Maplewood on 694 before slowing down to catch Lexington Avenue. Only a few miles down Lexington and I could see myself, the "myself" of the past. There she is...in seventh grade, running her five mile loop. There she is when she got her first job. There is where she got her first speeding ticket. Then, the street of my personal definition, where it all began, Lake Oaks Drive.

My husband turned in and I felt strange, aptly middle-named-Alice in Wonderland- yes my middle name is Alice. What happened to these trees? Why are they so tall and thick-branched? Why are the houses somehow different, longer, grayer? the lake at the end of the road is obscure, hidden. The sky looks smaller, the road narrower.

This is not the Lake Oaks Drive of my past.

I say this to my husband and he continues on silently. He has other things on his mind, the things that would occur to a husband drawing even closer to his in-laws. I sense the internal eye-roll, a skill picked up after ten years of marriage. I think I say this every time we direct the car this way, but I am surprised every time. It is not the Lake Oaks Drive of my youth, of thirty years ago. It is 2009, and everything has changed.

I have been that street, a snapshot that is stuck in the mind's eye of another. No matter how hard I try, I am always who I was twenty years ago, ten years ago, whenever that moment became so definitive that it cannot be forgotten. Sometimes it is a moment of beauty, a race won, a record broken. The mind might capture a special moment of childhood friendship or a the first blush of romance before it is tainted by expectations.

Or, the snapshot can be a picture of a darker moment, an instance when I hurt another, when I betrayed someone, when I disappointed, when I fell short of expected greatness. Often no one knows when the button is pushed on the memory camera, but when it happens, it becomes a photograph. A picture of the truth. The truth of one moment in a lifetime.

Lake Oaks Drive and I, we are sisters. No matter how hard I try, I cannot escape their surprise. Oh Liz, you have changed! You are no longer that unsure girl, that reckless woman, that foolhardy professional. But that is what I remember, it is so hard for me to see you this way, to think that it is REAL.

You know what I mean. You have snapshots, frozen memories of people. I say this to you. Let them grow. Let them change. Maybe they are not as perfect as you thought they were. Perhaps they are not as manipulative as you remember. Operative word: remember. Those days are gone. Familiarize yourself with the present. See who is here now, today. Let each person be who they are, NOW. Don't freeze them as your own personal Lake Oaks Drive. The poetic curve of the oaks, the history of the homes added-on, the worn streets are more beautiful than they were 30 years ago. Allow change.

Embrace today.

If you enjoyed this blog, please utilize the other resources at http://www.neadinspiration.com/ and listen to Liz's radio show at http://www.desmoineslocallive.com/ called "Skywalk Talk," from 11:00-12:30 cst, M-F. Liz Nead is committed to helping you succeed!