When I was young – old enough to know right from wrong but young enough to think the world revolved around me (5-35) – I was a master at allowing one moment (especially if that moment wasn’t going my way) to bleed into the next and the next and the next and the next. I could waste a good couple of hours for sure. If I worked hard enough, half a day. It took a lot of effort to ruin a whole day, but believe you/me I could do that too. But, it took work.
What I have come to understand since is this: a moment is just a moment. We have the choice of allowing it to permeate into our minds and reek havoc. We also have the choice to see it for what it is: A very brief picture in time. It doesn’t have to mean anything else – unless you want it to. If you want to give it power, then by all means build it up and place a lot of importance on it. Make it seem like that moment is more important than any one in the past and will ever be in the future.
Or you can see it for what it is and then move one. “It” only has as much power as you choose to give “it.”.
Pretty simple. You will always have the next moment, so don’t get paralyzed by this one.
After all, the past does not equal the future.