The Message of the Day is "It's all here today" -- meaning everything we have ever thought, everything we have ever done, every person we have ever loved -- it's all here today.
I think today's technology makes this more apparent than ever.
I remember a few years ago, driving some kids on a school van to school. A young girl on the van was reading a book with the lyrics of the Beatles, a group that didn't disbanded maybe ten years before she was born.
Probably because the music was available on the internet, it was fresh and live to her in a way that was never true to me when I listened to my parents' music when I was a kid growing up in Philadelphia.
But even if I remembered things differently than that young girl, what was true for her was true for me: "It's all here today."
Of course, the difference between that young girl and myself is time spent on earth.
I've lived a long time. I'm older now than my father was when he died.
Like others my age, I have a lot of memories about things I've done, people I've known, successes and failures I've had, things I've believed.
And the truth is, I see still a lot of those things as intimate parts of myself. To move on, I need to shed some skin.
It only takes a quick look around to see that in part I still define myself by my past.
I've got notebooks outlining uncompleted projects; books I've started reading and probably I will never finished; clothes that hold obscure memories that are better recycled or simply thrown away.
It's all here today. And I know that it's time to get rid of those things that no longer serve me. That no longer define who I am today.
So my challenge, and perhaps part of your challenge is well, is to take inventory and ask myself about my attachments: which of these old parts or images of myself am I carrying around that are no longer useful. What are the things I'm attached to that no longer serve me. What stories about myself am I most attached to? What ideas or beliefs am I most attached to? What can I let go or change?
For some of us -- and I'll raise my hand here an include myself in this group -- It's a bit of a struggle to let go of the person we used to be and to embrace the person that we are.
It's all here today means being present with today's needs, wants and aspirations.
And in no way a prisoner of our past.
That's the thought of the day.
