The past is an empty house.  We may look inside and out; through the windows and open doors.  We may walk through it in remembrance and nostalgia.  We may make copies and try to pattern our present and future upon it as well.  But we cannot dwell there.  Its floors and walls will not support us.  It is frail, and more frail as it recedes further into the past.

We can only dwell in the present, where things are real and substantive.  Only here, now, can the solid earth support us, the air sustain us, the water refresh us. Only here, now, can we wrap our arms around loved ones, and wrap ourselves in theirs.  The images of the past may follow us and we may try to create life in its image, to some extent. But we cannot go backwards to that place which does not exist any longer.  And why bother?  The here and now is full of delights and sensory wonders, of joy and love and immediacy.

The future?  It is a bright, shifting phantom of possibility.  It is waking dream, or nightmare if we are fearful.  Because it is not yet in existence, we may populate it and construct it as much as we like, knowing it may or may not be realized.  But, like the past, it is so far insubstantial.  Unlike the past, we are ever only seconds from moving into the future; only seconds from leaving the past forever.

Live now!  Love now.  Take joy in this time, this place, these loves.  Like it or not, there is no other time that can sustain us.

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