The past. The present. The future. Today. Tomorrow. Yesterday. Are they important? We think so. But do we live like they are? I’m not so sure. Sometimes we spend our tomorrows cheaply. We push things off we know we should do today. We take out debt, spending our future before we get there. We cheapen our yesterdays by not remembering. Not remembering our past mistakes, our past successes. Some of us only see our mistakes, we can’t believe, or don’t remember when we do things right. Very sad. We don’t see the good that we bring. Some of us never see our mistakes, preferring instead to dwell on perceived mistakes of others.
Some of us like chocolate. Perhaps a rough segue, perhaps not. Chocolate is a beneficial food that contains various helpful chemicals (especially, so they say, dark chocolate) or an addictive evil that adds caffeine and pounds to our already fragile bodies. Good? Evil? Yes. Very clearly the answer is both. Our view of our mistakes? The same. We cannot focus only on them and we can’t completely forget them. They are both sides of us. They are us.
But what else are we? We are the past, we are our future. But we are also chocolate. We can be good for ourselves. We can be bad for ourselves. The key is moderation. All things must be in moderation. Nothing extreme. Not some current pop definition of extreme. Not extreme soda or extreme candy or extreme television. Extreme is eating 42 pounds of pop rocks. Extreme is walking from St. Paul to Antarctica.
However, one of the things that must be in moderation is moderation itself. So the phrase is “All things in moderation, including moderation.” But, um, perhaps skipping the 42 pounds of pop rocks might be a good idea.