“No
Birds in Last Year’s Nest”
Given by Lloyd Newell (originally written and given
by Richard L. Evans – April 23, 1967)
These
lines from Longfellow suggest some self-searching:
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year’s nest!
1
Often
we regret and brood about past decisions – what we should
or shouldn’t have done. Or we think of what we should now
be doing and are not doing, of what we would like to learn,
and it makes us uneasy.
We
regret misunderstandings – words we wish we hadn’t said,
words we wish we had said, mistakes we have made,
people we have offended, opportunities gone by, errors and
carelessness that could have been avoided, places we might
have gone, things we might have been.
The
past has its place and is valuable for lessons learned.
The present also has its place, and what we cannot change
should not now needlessly keep us from looking and moving
forward. Nothing lost or left behind should keep us from
now becoming what we can become, from learning what we now
can learn.
There
are new decisions every day, every hour, and reasons to
improve and to repent. Whatever we are, wherever we’ve
been, each day we have some opportunity to determine direction.
Each
day we need to win, or keep – and certainly to deserve –
the love of loved ones; each day to be more patient, more
pleasant, more understanding. If there have been loved
ones neglected, unreconciled differences, unspoken gratitude, unacknowledged
debts, we ought to do now what we should do. If there has
been within something that has soured us, we well would
turn now to sweetening ourselves, for we hurt ourselves
as well as others when we live below the level of our possibilities.
Whatever
the past or its meaning, or its length, or its losses, or
its lessons learned or left unlearned, we go on from where
we are – wherever we are – and become what we can become;
with work, repentance, improvement; with faith in the future.
“For
Time will teach thee soon the truth, There are no birds
in last year’s nest!”
NOTE 1. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “It Is Not Always May.”
© 1967 by the Richard L. Evans family. Used by permission
