April 27, 2026- Today's work

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

~Paulo Freire

Quite often, when we reflect on the past, we do so to litigate it. It becomes an act of admonition, an opportunity to sift through regrets, a space to think about how wrongly we acted, how insensitive our choices of words, or how immature our thoughts were.

When we aren’t busy beating ourselves up, we are looking back with nostalgia on our accomplishments. We are thinking of those proud moments of when the stars all aligned for us and we got what we wanted.

Neither of those forms of reflection are particularly useful to us. We can’t take back what we’ve done and we can’t rest on what we’ve earned. The work must continue. We have choices to make today. Hopefully, our wisdom will help us to make those choices.

What have we learned from the past? What can we rely on? What work brought us closer to the best version of us? What took us further away?

We will not force ourselves into the type of growth and evolution we seek by beating ourselves up for the past. We cannot hate ourselves into making meaningful changes.

At that same time, we can’t just repeat our victories by remembering them. We must remember the work that led to those victories. Today’s work will lead to tomorrow’s victories. We are wiser today. We should act like it.