PAST TENSE?

"You'd turn out this way too, if you had a childhood like mine" was the answer two brothers gave whenever asked why their lives turned out the way they did. They shared a dreadful childhood. Their mother died young and their father was an abusive alcoholic who was violent with his children. Their nurturing was in the midst of the worst of family conditions. Obviously, all this had a huge impact on their eventual life scripts.

One brother could not cope with school and dropped out. He involved in various businesses and went through many lows. Like his father, he took to excessive drinking. After marriage, he would shout at and beat up his wife and his children, just like his father did. An unfortunate story was being repeated all over again.

His other brother too dropped out from school. He joined the trade of a mechanic and began to earn a decent living. He enrolled at a night school and went on to educate himself. He was a sensitive and supportive husband to his wife and a caring and doting father to his children.

Both brothers could not change their terrible past. Yet their diverse life scripts are a pointer that our life is eventually about the choice we make. While one brother succumbed to the dead weight of his past, the other chose to learn from his past and ensure that it was not repeated.

Pedro says, “the past tells where you come from, but it does not tell where you will go”. Where we go is decided not by our past but our response to it. Life is the script that we write by our actions and attitude. If we want our life to be better, we must go beyond the burdens of the past.

Whether our past was tense or whether it was the best…
Our life must go beyond to BE BETTER by laying it to rest!

- Pravin K. Sabnis