Past vs Present

A couple nights ago I had a dream...one part of it hit me so hard that it woke me up, and I haven't been able to forget about it since.

In the dream my mom was giving away a lot of my old childhood "stuff." I knew I didn't need any of it, but I also didn't want her to give it away - it was as if she was giving away my childhood and I would lose it forever. Of course the fact is that she actually did get rid of a lot of my stuff from childhood and I do miss/regret it sometimes - especially when I think of how Boy Wonder would have liked to play with it or have it (or more that I would have enjoyed seeing him playing with the same stuff I did). Anyway, in the dream my mother was beautiful, healthy and happy (she has to use a walker in real life...) which was wonderful and amazing. At one point while she was giving my stuff away and I was getting more and more upset, she turned to me and said "You spend so much time in the past that you're missing the present." Even just typing that line kind of makes my heart skip a beat...

I do spend a lot of time in the past. Sometimes it's "harmless" such as making scrapbooks or looking at old pictures and poems. Sometimes I think it's probably not a good thing, such as when I start thinking about "what ifs" and dissecting choices I've made and things I regret not doing.

What really hit me about my "mom's" statement is that for the last two weeks I had been working pretty much non-stop on a photo album of Boy Wonder's first year. When I started it I thought it was a great idea as it would be faster and more compact than doing a whole scrapbook...probably true but it still ended up monopolizing all my time for quite a while. And while I was working on the photo album (the past) I was missing out on time I could have been spending with my son (the present). Talk about a shot to the gut.

How does one stop spending so much time in the past and start truly living in the present? That's something I really need to work on. I think looking back is a good thing, remembering (and sometimes even honoring) the past is even necessary to knowing how to make the right choices in the future. It's finding the right balance that I need to work on.

Living fully in the present and not missing life's day to day occurrences - that's what I want for my future.