Rearview mirror

I was browsing through one of my favourite blogs (http://mtaa-wa-malimbika.tumblr.com) and I came across this picture and an idea went off my head...an analogy or a rear view mirror and how a driver uses it...the driver uses the rear-view mirror to glance occasionally backwards on his journey forwards...

Yet so many of us in life, we get so stuck at gazing in the rear-view mirror of our lives that we forget to look forward. The reason why so many people find it so hard to be happy is that they see the past better than it was and the present worse than it is. We get stuck in the past and refuse to look up, to look forward. 

Now imagine if someone driving a car did that...kept using the rear-view mirror instead of the huge mirror on top the dashboard? Wouldn't a crash be inevitable? As a passenger of this car wouldn't you knock some senses into this driver? I mean its okay to use the rear-view mirror to see anyone who comes too close to your vehicle, to see if you are in the right lane and once in a while to go backwards to a spot you may have missed. 

Yet why don't we do this with ourselves? Why do we live in the past and forget the present??? Why do we get surprised that we always remain broken??? I always remind myself that pain is inevitable - but misery is optional. Yet we never use the past as a gauge for the present, to make sure you do not repeat the same mistakes, to make sure others do not get too close to hurt us or vice versa...but keep steering at the present...its understandable that once in a while we need to look into the past to relive the memories, to learn the lessons that we never did in those moments...

Let us use the past as the driver uses the rear-view mirror to drive the vehicle forwards.