What psychics taught me

Today, I went to a psychic. Not because I necessarily believe in the supernatural, but because it was on my bucket list and because it sounded like a fun idea.

The woman who told my fortune was middle-aged and had a calming voice that made me want to believe her. She told me about my health, my love life, my conflicted soul. It was great and I loved every quirky minute of it, but, I 100% acknowledge how bull-shittery she was. I mean, this woman doesn't know me and even if she did, what gives her the right to think she knows when I will marry or die or move away?

But, there is one thing she told me that took me by surprise. It was in the context of my romantic life at the moment (but she made it very clear how applicable the fact could be to my life as a whole). Her beady eyes struggled to hold gaze with mine as she said, "you need to let the past be past."



So I will. The people who drained so much of my time, the worries that bogged me down, the memories that consumed my thoughts, they are in the past. But I- me as a person- I am the present. And I want to live NOW. So I will.

The present is so great for me right now. I am happy and healthy and surrounded my happy and healthy people. The moment I am in right now, 10:23pm on Christmas Eve Eve, is wonderful. My smile feels as big as the park I am sitting in and I could not ask to be a luckier soul. Why would I waste any time with the houses or the cars or the people on the streets I drove down to get here? What matters is not what I past, but where I ended up. And that is right here. And that is all. And that is great.

The ironic part, I think, is that this woman is a fortune teller. Her job description screams the peripherality of the present, urging her customers to worry about the future. And I will. I will worry about the future when it becomes the present and then what is present now will become the past and I will let it be past. But, really, the future is dependent on how well, how quickly, I can move away from the past.