Look Where You’re Going!

Look out! Look ahead! Look back! Look what you did! Look lively! Look what you’re leaving behind! Look what’s in front of you!
   There are so many “looks” in our lives that there’s no possibility of doing all of them, but we to tend to favor one or another direction.
   Getting older, the temptation may be to indulge in a lot of looking back. It can be kind of negative if it’s a matter of bewailing the past. “I used to be able to …” or “I wish I could … again” or “Things used to be so great a long time ago”.
   On the other hand, it can be very positive, when we recall with pleasure, joy, gratitude, and thanksgiving the wonderful experiences or blessings we’ve enjoyed over the course of our lives.
   But, even getting older, we still are challenged to and need to look ahead. How sad it is to fear tomorrow and to do our best to keep our head in the sand.
   If we are living a life of faith, we have great expectations and even an impatient yearning for the future. Alas for us, if we can’t see anything ahead of us and have closed eyes and no hopes for tomorrow.
   Looking back from time to time to celebrate happy events, accomplishments, and achievements is only natural and a source of satisfaction and happiness—but it’s no excuse for not looking ahead.
   If we live, we are in forward motion. It’s shear folly to close our eyes and grit our teeth like one with no future at all. Look around all you want, but no matter what, don’t forget to look ahead!
   If you can’t see anything on your own when you try to look ahead, look for someone who can see to guide you on your way, dog or human!
   And, of course, it goes without saying that asking for help from the One who always knows the way forward ensures making headway in spite of all our limitations.

   Be careful not to confuse looking ahead with knowing what’s ahead. Looking ahead is a matter of hope and discerning our direction—but we don’t actually entirely know what’s ahead of us until we get there.
   Not looking ahead means we’re abandoning responsibility for our own future. We’re not bothering to try to control the course of our lives, we’re simply drifting and passively accepting whatever transpires.
   Each of us is a free agent. We’re free to speculate, imagine, seek, set goals, work to achieve them or just drift through life or allow our course to be set or influenced by others and their decisions.
   We all once lived like this, at least for a while. It’s called infancy or early childhood and was appropriate for a brief period many years ago, but not anymore.
   We’re not a 007, licensed to kill, but we are accredited by God, licensed to live. If we deliberately stunt our growth, if we bind ourselves tightly with behaviors that prevent us from developing, if we pretend that one stage of our lives was the best and only one and cling to it dearly, we are opting for blindness, deafness, immobility, and dying.