Back to the beginning is where I am today. I started this blog 3 years ago as way to work through what I saw were the wrongs done to me by others and to try and figure out what happened. While the initial exercise worked in a way it was the wrong way to get where I wanted to be. It was when I realized that the past meant nothing that I was able to change they way I was reacting to what had happened. That is the key I believe. How we react to circumstances dictates our perception of them.

   

   Since I titled this blog Starting Over Over 50 I will attempt to keep to that topic. If you conduct a cursory search of the www you will find that there is an abundance of such blogs so I will just stick to what I know and what is working for me. It may not be enlightening or groundbreaking, but it will do what I set out to do when I first started. And what was it that I set out to do? I have no idea, but since I started this I really need to see it through to the end whenever that may be.

  What is the first thing I learned from starting over over the age of 50? Excellent question! I learned I needed to let go of the past. The truth is that past no longer exists. The memories of it linger and how we see those memories and which memories we choose to hold close are what define how we react to the past. Most of us let the past dictate our present and how we view the future. If we see the past as something terrible that harmed us and left us scarred, bleeding and reeling from repeated blows, the slings and arrows of misfortune leaving us bloody and near emotional death then that is what we are setting up our future to be. We have to realize that our reality is ours and ours alone. Those that we think shaped our present and defined our past really do not see it that way. To think of our past in that manner gives power to those people that they neither earned, nor deserve and probably do not want.

   As I go about my business I vow to attempt to stay in the present at all times. The past is gone and all that is left are memories and I choose to recognize those memories as what they are, ethereal visions of events that only hold meaning to me as they are my memories. Was it all bad? No, none of it was bad. I learned from the past and as near as I can tell I suffered no harm, physical or emotional. I am standing upright, happy and well. I am grateful for all that I have. Whatever I had yesterday means nothing because yesterday does not exist. Go about your day today and every day in celebration of the now, in grateful anticipation of things yet to come and with the confidence that you can survive anything. I am going to do that as I start over, over 50.