Much of one’s casual and seemingly innocuous private reflection can – so I have unwittingly lately observed – become absorbed in a perpetual review of the past as though it were an estranged but somehow recoverable arena. From the vantage of the present, the past has the appearance of record and accountability. I am not so certain. Time performs odd translations. Though a chronicle of the past may be excusably romantic or even accommodatingly accurate, the fact remains that an overriding interest in the past is both questionable and potentially unhealthy. Surely one’s ambitions must be otherwise directed than in reverse.

Overcoming the peril of prolonged rearview vision is  – not unlike so many mundane obstructions – more a matter of acknowledgment than difficulty. The confession of a preoccupation with the past is oddly enough an embarrassment – especially if the image of reflection outshines the present.  Whatever the character of the past – and admitting that it seldom repeats as one recalls – it constitutes an unfavourable mooring to prefer the past to the present.

Accordingly I have found it improving of my overall being to release the cable to the past and to move forward (and not look back).  The immediate repercussion of the resolve is to instil an unanticipated buoyancy to what is beyond the now vast and faceless horizon. The unidentified future affords a reality to the evolution of the human experience; the reality is the unfolding of life in the unpredictable drama and storm of the present.

It warrants admission as well that this particular leap from one former floatation (the past) to another pier (the present) removes me from a vernacular to which I had long become accustomed but which inevitably required adjustment. We’re now addressing an entirely new and unclear realm of possibilities. No longer are we content merely to ask, “Where now?” Attaching to this liberal curiosity is a fathomless array of ventures. Already we have muted the appeal of the cruise or the train ride – not because of any dissatisfaction but because we don’t want precipitously to contaminate the multitude of other options.

The consideration of these matters is coincidentally heightened today by the arrival of my new updated (10-year) passport. If, where and when we shall travel abroad is now both conceivable and possible – though at this point, not yet probable. Currently we are very much suffering the doldrums of travel, a combination of stagnation and depression. No doubt it is the prevalence of these toxic features which previously animated a resort to the past; but now instead I am hopeful to quell the sluggishness and gloom by stepping from one stone to another. It requires a particle of application and gusto. I won’t be the first to remark upon the hidden histrionics of the present.