Can I Really Look Forward Without Looking Back?

Whenever I look back at old blogs two things leap out. I'm reminded that I'm good with words, and also that when I blog it is something of a release valve. When I first started recording my thoughts I was still reeling from multiple life changes. The death of my father, the starting of a new job further to a horrible conclusion to the old one, and of course my loss of faith. The 3rd of these remains the most difficult and painful process I have had to work through, because it turned everything in my life upside down. You expect parents to die, and jobs change across the course of a life, but I'd assumed that my faith would be a constant source of comfort and strength. Freddy Mercury once observed that you can be in a room full of people who love you and still feel the lonliest person in the world. This is horribly true, and as I look back I don't think I have every really healed. I'm not angry anymore, though. When I first loss my faith I was a bull in a china shop, sending fragile crockery everywhere and goring anybody who came too close. I'm not proud of that, and I did much to alienate the people I had once called friends. You see when something so fundamental shifts within your life there's no way of knowing how large the blast radius will be, or how deep the scars will gouge. As I look back I am beginning to understand that many of the changes in me were not good. I think as I get older I find myself withdrawing more and more. Find it harder to make those connections which once happened so effortlessly. I was the guy you could stick in any room and I could always find a way to strike up a rapport. I was a social labrador. Everybody's friend. Nowadays I feel a lot like an island cut off from the mainland. I can get there if I wanted but the journey feels just too hard. I've let some friendships slide and stopped making an effort, and I know I am a fool to myself for doing so. And now to the weird contradiction; I still find people fascinating and compelling. I still love to listen, to really listen, and I like to understand where other's are coming from. Yet I'm reluctant to engage too much and I'm really not too clear why? Perhaps its the residual emotional fallout from years ago, a background expectation that nothing lasts and all is transient. I mean that's all true, but I think I may have taken that too much to heart. Even as I write this I find it hard to make sense of where I actually am right now. A man of contradictions, of passions sometimes misdirected. As for core values I think those remain intact; I simply want to live my life without doing so at the expense of others. I want to learn what is true and what is not. I want to be a positive force as much as this is within my power. Heck this is a wild ramble even by my standards. Being a half decent husband and father is as good a start as any, and I think I can achieve that. Trying to be gentler in my dealings with those I find a challenge. Picking the battles that really matter and letting the inconsequential stuff slide. There is literally no part of my life that I could have scripted and any master plan I may have had has long since been lost to memory. My story just kind of unfurled, which I expect is true for many of us. Do any really closely follow the path they had in mind, or are we, as I suspect, simply blown around like flotsam on a human tide? As for the future I have only outlines of where I want to go, and I expect that'll get blown around too. Perhaps that's just the way the world is, and the real challenge for all of us is how we create something of value and meaning from the debris all around us. Fun fact, whenever I start a blog I have absolutely no idea where it is going other than a few rough ideas. It's like winding up one of those clockwork toys and then placing it down on a smooth surface. It could go anywhere. It often does. That kind of sums me up. . .