Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago!" has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birth-day", wrote Jerome K. Jerome in his book "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow". I can't remember when I started looking back to the good old days, but it must have been when I had found Eve and settled down.
Ah, memory, the pleasure and the pain of it! Jerome's last essay in this delightful little book is entitled "On Memory", and he begins it by remembering the first poem he learned. Memory is not always reliable and much of the things we should or would like to remember are forgotten. Men will always want to return back in time but that is impossible and so we must try to enjoy the life we have.
"Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and 'Forward!' is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building; it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life, thinking of what might have been, and forgetting the maybe that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone."
Perhaps listening to the reading of this essay, or reading it here, or listening while reading along, will help you do it. Happy memories!
