Matthew Lyle Landsman

My response to the cliché …’you can’t live in the past…’
It is my past that taught me about tomorrow. It was my past that gave me failure to turn to future victory. My past that gave me every embrace and smile from my mother, to sustain me through all my tomorrows. My past that nourished me and gave me all my height and every ounce of sinew, that I carried to field of hay, field of play, all the strength to heft tool and toil for long days in both chilled air and heat.
It is my past that brought me all the smiles that I recall as I hope to find new smiles today. My past that urges me when I am shadowed with doubt, and look to the reserve of memory that tells me in fact; I can. Because I have. And I know I will again. It is my past that proves to me, that educated me with lessons hard and harsh, with tough love and subtle reminders.
It is every moment of my past that I am a cumulative result of. My failings taught me to live and learn. My winning moments taught me to be gracious and to always look back. And my losses taught me to be kind when I did win…for the victory isn’t in humiliating and demoralizing others…It isn’t done when I have won. It is done when I have helped the one who tried and fell short, to rise again and learn to enter the arena another day. My past of mixed results has made me a better man.
My past gave me a child, and ushered him away into the world. My past made me a father, and gave me the need to father, even if not my own. The past also took away some fathers from those kids for which I rise up to fill that void. The failings of others are the opportunity for me to rise to the occasion and help give a kid a future. I know this, because I live in the past. Their past…
My past nearly ended me, and drove me to my knees. It saw me torn and broken. The arrogance of youth is soon lost in a sea of humble…an ocean of humiliation. I hold those crevasses of foolishment close to my heart…so I never return to that stretch of road. Those moments are the ones that continue to remind me how fortunate I am to be among the living. I live in the past, so I can continue to live. I got sober in my past, and that moment is revisited often.
Something about my past shines with a recollection; that no matter the darkness of the hour, of glow of jubilant hours, I have always found my faith kept me afloat, reminded me to be grateful. I haven’t always embraced those moments when I probably should have, but the essence has followed me and waited there with open arms, an open mind and heart…healed me, forgiven me, schooled me and loved me without fail. I don’t live in the past, but my past lives on in me.
My past gave me teachings from my parents and the world around me. God followed and accompanied me, even when I lived some days with reckless abandon. No matter how my past has been taken for granted, I never found myself abandoned. I don’t dwell on my past; I let it teach me the moral of the story. And remind me of those things, people, and moments I like to revisit, but not to reside there anymore.
Welcome to my past, I’ll learn what it taught me; tomorrow. MLL