When you're biting at the bit for "Throwback Thursday" to arrive, you just may be living in the past. For me, the past is like a library. When I visit, it is merely to re-visit a time and place that I may have forgotten, need to prove a point with, reminisce to keep love alive or to add relevance on something going on today that may be useful for tomorrow.
THE WAY I SEE IT
Yesterday
Doesn’t Live
Here Anymore
By Joe Santos, Jr.
32 THEEDENMAGAZINE.COM e June 2019
Let’s be honest, we all know a few people living in yesterday. Certain friends, even relatives. Some “stopping" in a time they felt their happiest. Maybe it was in the '80s, or the 1950's & 60's. Times when they thought they were at their most successful, glamorous, wealthiest, attractive, or even most loved self. Maybe they stopped at a time when they experienced significant loss hoping to keep themselves from ever having to experience such pain, disappointment, or heartbreak ever again, so they keep reminding everyone around them of it. Does that even work? Does recounting your past over and over and over again do anything other than drive most of your friends and family nuts? You know, "when I modeled for Halston" or "when I had my gallbladder removed" (20 years ago), or "when I was married to so and so" or "when I lived in that NYC Brownstone" or "when sweet Pookie ( a poodle ) died at 18 years old." Hello? That means Pookie lived to be 82. Longer than most people live, and probably better! Come on, give us a break! Do the math! If one's past is something that needs a constant reference to, do they realize that for them there will never be a tomorrow let alone a today? The only thing we truly own is right now — this second. Yes, if we are fortunate enough to gather the "525,000 six hundred minutes" that make up a year and times that by a lifetime then we can count ourselves exceptional. But genuinely extraordinary people don't live in a broken mirror. And that's what so much of the past is. A series of gifts, lessons, experiences mostly recounted by blurred visions. "Blurred" by the way we choose to remember, bury, embrace, or choose not to forget. Have we seen people living in a home, hairstyle, fashion, or attitude totally outdated? There are many personal fears to conquer all of us. Some fear failure and others fear success. But what about those who fear "fear" itself? That one place in life that stopped us from going forward, letting go, letting in and accepting that life is precisely just that. We can’t be frightened of what we don’t know. Fear is just that, it can be the scariest place on earth, a terrifying moment in time, or merely the "Boogie Man" who is gone the second the light goes on. Fear can also be conquered. Keep living and let the past be what others write about us. We have a whole Library to fill.
Joe Santos, Jr. is a Celebrity Chef and Life-Stylist. He joins The Eden Magazine as a writer sharing his unique view on life, death, love, and the avoidance of mediocrity. Follow Joey on Instagram @jojoboy13
