Post 1: Serenity Postulate #23

This is a repost. Even though it's over 2 years old, it still rings fresh in my mind as one of the most important food for thoughts I've ever scrawled high up on the walls of this House. It encompasses several interesting truths that apply to my life at this very moment and time. And I am always mindful of it...

I wrote in an earlier post that I have a small baby blue suede journal that I tend to grab for recording little interesting things I hear throughout the day, hopefully for use in my writing material at some point or another. I sit in the cubicle I share with my cubicle mate Cowgirl Cre and I read whatever I've written the night before. We get a good chuckle out of that, especially when I tell her where I got the idea from ("Girl, I got that from Good Times!")

My blog sistas and I have an email thread that goes on and on all day, and it might as well be instant messenger, LOL... All kinds of interesting convos go on... everything from joning on one another, uplifting one another, to the extremes of fighting and getting cussed out... Let's just say, uh, I feel kind of weird if we aren't "communicating" in one form or another, LOL...

I listed some of the interesting things from my notebook on the thread, and Super Shoe Queen Blogger, Serenity23, got WAAAAY too excited about one of them, to the point where she used it a couple of times... So we have jokingly called it "The Serenity Postulate #23". She asked me to use it as a "Food for Thought" and expound on it...

The Serenity Postulate #23 states:

My past...

I can't unscramble THOSE eggs.

Serenity saw that on the thread, snatched it up, and ran full speed ahead in with it... I remember her saying, "This happened in the past, blah, blah blah. I can't uncscramble those eggs!"

I wanted to send her an email saying "Woo, woo, woo, Serenity."

I have no idea what we were talking about, but that postulate is loaded, and we could discuss it alll day if we had to. I think I picked up the phrase from the finance class I am currently taking, but I thought that it had implications reaching far past financial isshas.

I suppose trying to "unscramble" an egg that has already been cracked and cooked is a most difficult thing to do. Can one actually take a scrambled egg and take it back to the state that it had been in a few moments ago, perfectly round yolk in the middle of the slimy whites, and place it back into a shell that doesn't look like it has ever been cracked?

I don't know.

Same thing with the past, i.e., the events and personal isshas of the past.

I find that when I think of my past I don't particulary think about the accomplishments. I purchased my first home a couple years ago, and that's a huge accomplishment. I obtained a Ph.D. close to 10 years ago (man, has it been THAT long?), and that is something to be proud of.

However, my accomplishments are gravely overshadowed by my failures (in my mind's eye). I think more about my failures than about my successes. And that's not good.

I mean, I say to myself often "Knowing what I know now, if only I could go back and do A, B, and C over..."

But that's not possible. The past is the past. I can't change the past...

I can't "unscramble those eggs."

I must learn from my past, instead of wallowing in regret of my past, and that is a difficult thing for me to do. A couple of nights ago, as I lay across my bed reading a book, I started thinking about some personal mess in the past, and I started crying. Didn't understand why I got upset all of a sudden.

I attributed it to PMS, and pulled myself back together.

All the failures, the mistakes, the pain, the anger... all of that is in the past. I can't change it, and most of all, I need to stop meditating on it. Today is a NEW day. And any day I wake up on the right side of the dirt is a GOOD day. Period.

I have tried to drill into the heads of my brother Milk and Cookies and my sister Kentucky that they will learn from my mistakes or they will learn from their own mistakes. Whatever the case... They will learn. But the thing that they don't want is to make those mistakes, and it be a part of their memory forever, to the point where they are analyzing it, trying to figure out how to undo it, and it paralyzes them, etc... They look at me with that "deer in the headlights" look when I say such things, but hopefully they will someday understand.

With that said, I can't fully focus on the drive ahead to my destination, if I keep staring in the rear view mirror at what's going on behind me...

I keep telling myself that. Hopefully, someday it will take root in my heart.

I'm glad this "postulate" touched Serenity's heart, and she took it in her arms and embraced it as her own. She has been through things that I don't think I could have ever handled, but despite all of that, she presses forward towards her goals and dreams... She is a huge inspiration to me because I have witnessed her, for close to three years, move forward and grow by leaps and bounds, despite the isshas of her past.

She knows that she can't unscramble THOSE eggs...

I have to, as our other blog sista The LadyBug Mocha says: "Man up and stop being a punk"...

...and get to the point where I know that too.

(I think, upon the hard approach to 40, I wholly understand that.... finally).