Echoes

With gray hairs people assume, expect, and look for the benefits of experience.  Ironically history isn’t worth much if it isn’t used as a learning blotter.  Each has the opportunity to learn.  Each carries the skill within their souls to change and grow.  Each can listen to the echoes of yesterday, seeing things more completely, accepting the reality of life’s lessons, and leveraging on the experience of others who are traveling along the same path.  Yet many cannot be bothered to take advantage of what lies within their grasp. 
 
As I watch and listen to the emerging talent in New York, I find great musicians are consistently setting an example we can use.  No one player has a monopoly on what works.  At the same time those with experience can help others coming along the way.  Some ideas simply don’t work.  They have been tried, tested, and proven to be dead ends.  At the same time some new ideas help both mentor and student.  Different approaches, new techniques, and insightful combinations express the heart of the human experience in different ways.
 
The relationship model set out works across the human journey.  We can and should lean on each other.  We can and should learn from the experiences each has along the way.  There are new ideas out there waiting to be discovered, shared, and leveraged.  Yet some ideas don’t hold merit.  The warning from those who have traveled before us is there, if we care to pay attention.  “When people tell you, ‘Try out the fortunetellers.  Consult the spiritualists.  Why not tap into the spirit-world, get in touch with the dead?’
 
Tell them, ‘No, we're going to study the Scriptures [sacred writings].’  People who try the other ways get nowhere—a dead end!” (Isaiah 8.19, 20) 
 
My experience confirms the wisdom of this advice.  We can learn from yesterday’s echoes, yet we only live in the present.  Today is an opportunity to dialogue – listen and share, reflect, and live.  Everything is open.  The present exists with limitless opportunities.  You and I hold freedom without our grasp.