I am sure that most of us have heard that the only two sure things in life are death and taxes. The Bible speaks of only two people that escaped death…for the time being. And as for taxes, I could write a lengthy political treatise concerning taxation. Many try to skirt around them, avoid them and even lie about them. But eventually the tax will be collected in one form or another. Henry David Thoreau thought he could go without paying his taxes because he did not agree with how they were being spent. He ended up spending one night in jail because of it and probably would have been incarcerated longer if family members had not paid the tax. But since I am not in the mood to discuss the pros and cons of civil disobedience, I’ll leave that one alone.
What I do want to propose here is a third item that cannot be avoided – history will always repeat itself. I’m not even referring to a large global scale of this reality, but on an individual and personal level.
Our youngest daughter graduates from college on Friday, and Wendy and I will officially have the empty nest syndrome. She will be overseas for the summer working on an internship, and when she returns, she will be starting graduate school. I have spent the last couple of weeks listening, watching and doing a lot of thinking. Everything that she is doing is something so exciting and new for her, but something that is not so new for a dad that is 52 years old. Thinking back over the portion of those 52 years that I can remember, it is like I continually press some enormous rewind button and keep repeating the same positives and negatives of my life. Every time I think something is done and over with…voila! There it is again.
For instance, when I added my book, Better to Be Broken, to the millions of other inspirational books clogging the shelves of bookstores, I looked at that as a parenthetical moment in my life. Book written, story told, lessons learned and time to move on. That was not even a year ago and I already find myself dealing with so many of the same issues I wrote about. Perhaps a little twist here, a slightly different nuance, or a new person involved, but the same story repeats itself nonetheless.
Everyone speaks of the “great circle of life,” but I think I would prefer the great timeline of life. Always moving ahead, facing new and uncharted territory and leaving the past behind. Of course we can learn from history. Things to do better or different, and pitfalls to avoid. The only problem with that, is that I often find I learned nothing, along with the rest of humanity, and am doomed to repeating my previous failures.
So as Ariel faces her future with arms open wide, I pray that she also has her eyes open wide. Perhaps she has watched me enough over the years to avoid some of my mistakes. She may make some new ones of her own, but perhaps, just maybe, a little portion of history will not repeat itself.
lifegoeson4us 