Glancing back, looking forward, staying present
It's a Good Friday
My husband has gotten on a walking kick. He has a mile and a half loop around our house that he frequents several times a day now. It sports a brick street with cute 50’s bungalows, a view of the lake, two mini libraries, a linear park, and occasionally a rabbit or two if we get out early enough. A local Osprey flies over head with a fish every few days and the hawks that live in the creek valley yell at it like mad. The woodpecker even seems to take his mornings pretty easily, perched atop a tree rather than pecking away.
I’ve tried to talk him into other routes, but he likes his world predictable—which means I get to watch subtle things change over time. The freeze earlier this year spared one stand of bamboo and killed another. There are a few benches, but not many—a bench in the right place is a delight. There are a few e-bikes, but not many and they’re tolerably well behaved.
We recognize the folks that are out about the same time, though subtle timing changes keep those connections hit or miss. This morning we saw that we had missed one pair we regularly see by a few moments. Rather than walking towards us, we were behind them today—and they never looked back.
It got me thinking about he way our vision works.
Why don’t we have eyes in the back of our heads?
When my oldest was little, I told him I had eyes in the back of my head—and I know he checked multiple times. Moms keep their heads on a swivel because they have to.
In most of the West, this day is set aside to remember a sacrifice so horrifying and amazing it boggles the mind. He who had everything gave it all up for those that were His enemies in the most excruciating way possible.
We keep tabs on what is behind us, both in the moment and metaphorically. When we enter a room or a space, we create a 3D model of that space on which to hang all of our memories. We often scan the area at first and then remember where the people are in that room or road because they’re important to our brains. Close your eyes right now. Who is in the room with you? Where are they? Who was the last person in the room with you and where were they? All of those things are readily available to your memory. Even the dog sleeping next to me is accounted for (and she’s not as grumpy as she looks).
We remember the parts of our past that had impact or meaning—moments flooded with dopamine or adrenaline—yet the seasons of our lives when there is no joy fade into the background. That makes me wonder about what people with Parkinson’s remember once their dopamine systems begin to collapse.
Yet, we are not designed to look behind us.
Our eyes face forward.
We see within about a 20 degree cone around our focal point, but even there, we don’t see very far. It is fascinating to me that we can understand emotions out to about a hundred feet, but not much farther.
It’s a hint.
In our lives, we can make big plans and toy with big ideas far ahead of us, but relationships—the things that ultimately matter to us—can only be built up close. There are pivotal moments in our lives and in those moments when we dream big dreams, but those dreams are cloudy at best. Few parents plan for their newborn to be prom queen or football star—although some do. We learn who they are as we come to know them as people. And over time, the change.
Some of the best marriage advice I’ve heard in the last 40 years is to recognize that you have not married one person—they are ultimately many women and men with an eternal spirit. They will change dramatically over time. Your job is to recognize and celebrate those changes as they come. You cannot serve the person they were or the person they will be. You can only rejoice in who they are right now.
It’s also critical to understand that when you’re moving fast, your focus will always be very far ahead of you, which means you’ll miss seeing the people that you are passing by. Unless you keep them close and they’re moving with you at the same speed, You’ll quickly pass them by.
Does that mean we don’t plan ahead or make goals? Heavens, no! If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Plans are nothing; planning is everything. We hold those plans loosely knowing that the days are long and the years are far shorter than we could have ever imagined.
I talk a lot about driving in this blog, but we rarely think of driving as it is:
Driving is an experience, made up of moments in time.
We don’t understand our drive as a route, we feel it as a series of flows and interruptions—and we rarely remember much of what has gone before this moment. Speed isn’t just a velocity, its the frequency at which the world goes by. We can’t see the entire length of our drive, only this moment.
We are actually incapable of feeling speed, and we rarely feel the change in speed either. What we notice is the change in the change in our speed—the 2nd derivative—also known as jerk. Seems like as we’re moving through life, jerks are about all we notice there too.
The High Speed Backwards Chase
Florida Man is funny. Last week someone got stopped for driving backwards on a 4-lane roadway. He claimed it was stuck in reverse and was driving to get it fixed, but was also driving on a suspended license.
How many of us feel like our lives are broken and all we can see is behind us? It’s hard to let go of the past when it feels unresolved. Our brains are prediction engines—and they hate to be wrong. When you’re focused on the past, your brain will only expect that past to repeat itself—and your brain will make sure it does, even if it hurts you to do so.
Days to remember, Lives to live forward
On this Good Friday, it’s proper to think of the past. During the Last Supper, Jesus told us to take moments to remember. He also chose to walk that path for the joy set before him—looking forward to what that sacrifice would buy for Him and for us. Yet,
He lived in moments:
showing us how to let go of the past so that it doesn’t imprison us there.
showing others how not to worry about tomorrow—for tomorrow has enough trouble of its own
We can choose to fully embody the present moment as well.