"Have you ever been a stranger to yourself?", she asked. "Many, many times", he replied.

Been a long time since I posted.  I am 100% sure no one is in the least bit concerned with my innermost thoughts, so at least there's no chance of going viral. 

I read somewhere that you can never move ahead if all you do is look behind.    It is an excellent adage until you read the one that history is bound to repeat itself if you forget it.  Oh, the conflict.

I sit here listening to the Star Trek: Picard trailer and I am filled with a sense of what used to be.  Brandy told me once that she wondered what I might have been if life had been different. 

Without being overly dramatic, I look back across the gulf of my memories from 1994 until today and I see faces from the past whose absences are palpable.  My living room is a universe away from where I was several years ago.  Don't get it twisted, as Brandy says.  Now is a wonderful time for me.  I am about to take my PRP credentialing exam and I have the stability I used to think would never come.

A voice in the trailer said, "Sometimes I worry you have forgotten who you are."  There are things about me I have not forgotten.  There a labels I hope that the people who love me use when I am not around to describe who I am.   Chancellor.  Parliamentarian.  Best Friend.  Insightful.  Indefatigable.  Loyal without question.   Emotional. 

Throughout the years, I have lost people to the winds of time...sometimes things fall apart.  In 2002,  Dr. William K. Haggard, EdD told me "There are good people everywhere, don't be afraid to look."  He was right.  That statement is a truism for me and I have met so many wonderful souls in my travels. 

Watching the trailer was like walking headlong into a door frame when you are not paying attention to where you are going.  What have the last two decades brought to bear?  At least this evening, it has brought a quiet introspection and a clarity I feel I have been missing for a long time.

I know I could have been better - a better friend, a better employee, a better giver, a better teacher - nothing I can do about that now.  Yesterday is as over as the Peloponnesian War.  Tomorrow though is another day.  Sometimes it is okay to look over your shoulder and see what is no longer.  Just don't forget that what you will become could supercede all your regrets and anxieties.

I hope my tomorrow will be just that.  Something amazing.  I am going to do my best.

I wonder how I will feel when I read this in the future and if I will remember the clarity of today.  I hope so, but I'm not getting any fresher.