Respecting Your Past!

"Ok, Dad," sixteen-year-old Ajee Robinson said to her father, grabbing a window seat in their favorite diner on their weekly Saturday morning breakfast. The Breakfast Place was a small comfortable, friendly, family-owned diner. Ajee loved their lite raspberry buttermilk pancakes, served with organic maple syrup and fresh raspberries. "I have a question."

Reading her father's eyes, she followed the signal.

Bella, one of the waitresses, approaches wearing an apron covered with many beautiful orange and black butterflies. A smile to match.

"The regular?" she asked as she reached their table, her eyes moving from Ajee to her father.

"Yes," Ajee quickly said.

Anthony, her father, said, "I want something different today. How about a spinach omelet for a change?"

Bella snatched a small notebook and pen from her apron pocket, quickly wrote his order down, then she hurried away.

"Ok, dad," Ajee continued glancing around, making sure it was ok to continue. "I have been living with you for five years after mom died. I noticed that everyone in our neighborhood gives you maximum respect. We have been to specific towns, and everyone seemed to be esteemed by you. What did you do to deserve that kind of recognition? I mean, no one bothers me. At all. Even the young men are mindful around me."

Her question pulled him back to a place of rebirth and learning, along with a far-off look in his eyes; his only daughter couldn't read. He blinks, sending his emotion back where they came from as she stares deeper into his eyes. Then he said, still blinking, "the honor I get is because of the things I did in my past."

"But shouldn't we forget the past?" she asks.

"That's what they are trying to tell us. But I and others gain our respect from our past actions, choices, and decisions. Not from what we haven't done yet in the future."

"So our former times aren't as bad as everyone is saying?"

"Well," he said, pulling his words. "It depends on what you did then."

"Dddaaaddd!" she dragged her letters.

Bella approaches with their breakfast on a cart. Placing each plate on the table, she asked, "anything else?"

Eying his daughter, Ajee said, "no, thank you."

Attacking her pancakes, after drizzling maple syrup on top, she chewed and swallowed, then went on, "So, you are saying that I should respect my good old days because it's loaded with ammunition?"

Grinning, Anthony pushed back, "You don't have any good old days," nodding in amusement.

"You know what I am talking about, Dad," she said, laughing.

"Ammunition for what?" her father adds.

"In case I need to save myself."

Still grinning while cutting into his spinach omelet, Anthony shares, "Leaving good behind, you will have no problem going back."

"So if I leave the bad behind, I will have a problem?" jumped out of Ajee's mouth quickly.

"Yes," her father stared at her with curiosity. "Society forces us to fear our times of yore. Yet, it's more potent than what lies ahead. Without a past, we have nothing to carry into the future."

"So, it's like a suitcase, a handbag, or a wallet we carry around with our life in it?" she continued to probe.

"Ok!" her father said, dropping his fork on his plate. "What is going on?"

"I know I don't have enough yesteryear in storage. But Donna, my best friend, said she was afraid of her parent's history. She said they are always running away from it, but it keeps finding them."

Nodding in awe that his daughter was so aware, he smiled and counseled, "Our past is our first life. The future is our second."

"So the future can be a second chance?"

His brows shot up quickly as he stared at her with curiosity, then continued, "The first life will be longer than the second. Our second life sometimes lasts only for a few moments, but our first life will allow many of us to relive all moments, at a cost to some of us."

Absorbing her father's power of words, Ajee asks, "Dad, do you regret your past?"

Taking her tiny hands, she inherited from her mother into his, staring into her light brown eyes she got from him, love pouring from his heart, he said, "If I do that, then I would regret you. There are no regrets in my past. I turned them into lessons. You changed my life. Your entry into this world gave me a reason to be good. I am not afraid of my past. That's where the best of me is stored."

"Oh, Dad," she said, caressing his hands. "I am glad you respect your past."

Humans don't understand. The millionaires, famous people we glorify and put on pedestals, etc., aren't renowned for the things they haven't done yet or are about to do in the future. They get their glory for what they did yesterday. Our days gone by have more to tell us and teach us than what's to come. The past allows us to live how we want to into the future.

All funerals are a journey into our past. That congregation is contented with that voyage at that point and time. Most people leave a funeral with sadness in their hearts. Some left with a new lease on life. Our past is vital to us living in the future. Respect it!

You will need to make many withdrawals from the wisdom, knowledge, and experience that lives there.

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it. Please enjoy more from other writers on this platform.

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