As much as we would sometimes like, we can't go back. There are times in everyone's life, I'm sure, where we wish we could get a "do over" or a new beginning. But the past is always there.
This weekend I made a trek to a land of my youth. To a magical place where life seemed very complicated, but was really very very easy.
It was, afterall, a time when I was much younger, I had my life ahead of me and I had the world by the tail.
It was my college year. My time at (then) Ferris State College. It's now known as Ferris State University.
I had stopped by campus briefly, once, several years ago. But this trip was different. I would also be visiting the past in the form of my former boss, Bette Hartig, when I worked for the college. I also planned to attend a theater production with a friend (who is currently a student) at the theater on campus.
This crazy mix of past memories and the real and present world has been quite a whirlwind.
As I walked around the Rankin Student Center I hardly recognized the place. Additions and renovations have made the old new(er). I smiled when I turned a corner and caught a glimpse of early-eighties students who have long since graduated playing 25-cent video games that have long since been moved into the dumpster.
I took a drive around campus and realized that the roads had even been changed and the traffic moved in a totally different pattern from years ago.
Yet, I was flooded with memories of the hundreds of thousands of footsteps I had surely taken as I journeyed around campus over a four-plus year span in the early 80s.
Oh, it was a different time. If I had only known then when I know now.
But we can't go back.
We we can, for a moment in time, forget where the years have taken us and relive the past through our memories.
For me, it was a happy time. Maybe even a happier time.
This trek back into time has caused me to recall and reflect and look toward the future.
We can't have a new beginning, that chapter is written and the book is closed.
But the ending isn't written. And what we do TODAY, is be the path we take toward that ending.
Make the most of it with no regrets.
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