Tweaking the past

We cannot change the past. We can’t change big things (perhaps that’s easy to accept). But we can’t even change the smallest of things (sometimes that’s hard to accept).

The call to run one play over another in sports. The use of a word that unintentionally causes harm. A split-second decision in driving.

If only we could go back and change that one tiny thing.

Of course, we can’t.

We have now, and we have what’s next.

The past is fixed. Unchangeable. We can choose to obsess over it (and over undesirable outcomes) or we can choose to let it go. To learn. To move on. Or to move through.

While we can’t change the past, we can determine its meaning and its influence upon our future.