Long Night’s Journey Into Yesterday
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 by Mark | Posted in Unconventional Thinking | Comments
When we sleep, we can glide in any direction, slipping effortlessly into the past just as easily as into the future.
On our voyage back in time, we are free to rectify mistakes, wipe the slate clean, change decisions, mend broken hearts, place bets we failed to make, walk on water, recognize the genius we wrote off as weird, untie the knots that bound us up in our own deceit.
That magic is limited to the realm of sleep.
Or is it?
Nearly every day, people come into my office, standing in front of me as they dwell in the past. They talk of what might have been, of what went wrong, of why they must be anchored to yesterday. Not only can they go backwards in time, but so often, they appear to be hostage to it.
We talk about 2010, about their business goals, the challenges they will face and the odds they will overcome to achieve them. We talk. We talk.
But I see, at a moment in time, a flash, that it is an exercise in futility. They are sleep walking into the future, tethered to the past. To the failures that shook their confidence. To the losers who lied to them and told them the earth was flat. To the naysayers who took pleasure in demeaning them and whittling them down to size.
But as we head into this new year, perhaps the most important resolution we can make is to see the goblins of the past for what they are: figments of the imagination that have no place in the light of day.
Nothing great ever happens in yesterday.
Mark Stevens
CEO
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