Although what you say and what you do count, no record is kept. The slate is wiped clean. There is no past. There is no place that the past is kept except in the human mind. History is recorded, yet it is gone. It never happened. No matter how important the past, individual and collective, the past is of no account. You are released from the past. Remembrance of the past is not to tag along all your days. The past is a ghost.

You cannot live even in the pleasurable past. The past is salt thrown over your shoulder. It is behind you. The past is not current. It is a poor currency. It is Confederate money that lost its worth. The past lost its worth the minute after it seemingly existed. Let the past be a bygone.

Evidence of the past is only evidence. It is a shadow. True, there are photographs. But what is a photograph but a shadow? True, there is a wood desk from childhood. But what is it except that you say so? Whatever you say, it is a piece of wood. It served, and it may serve now as a writing desk, and yet it is made of what was once a tree and is no longer.

The present awaits your love. The past had it. Sometimes the past has your love only long after it has past. You may take the shadow and color it in, and yet it is still only the past.

It may be that not a day in your life goes by without your mourning what you see as loss of loved ones. Your loved ones changed their address. They moved somewhere else where they are happier than ever before. They never lost your address. You could move a dozen times, and still they know where you are, and they love now.

To love now means to love in the field of Eternity. Missing is not the same as loving. Missing is not a substitute for love. Missing loved ones who once surrounded you physically is not love. Missing is one thing. Loving is another. Missing clutches while love lets go. Kiss and let go. Be glad for your loved ones’ journey, and be glad for yours.

Sadness overwhelms you. Let love overwhelm you. Memories are not love. They are memories of love. Memories are not the real thing. They are an attempt. Truly, beloveds, you can try and try to recapture, yet the past is gone. It is gone. It is yesterday’s newspaper. It is no longer current. It is not valid. Why do you seek to collect it? Why do you strive to attain what you cannot?

Love the past, but do not wrap it up in beautiful paper and keep it in a drawer with lavender. Letting go of the past is not throwing it away. Letting go of the past is your ceasing to hold onto it. The past knows it is past. It doesn’t care. It was a page in a novel. It was read by many. The past doesn’t mind having been read, and it doesn’t mind being let go of. The past likes to be released. It does not want to be held onto anymore than your loved ones of the past want to be held onto.

Letting go of the past means you no longer relive it. The past was always illusion. It is more so now. Relieve yourself of the past, of past debts, past trauma, even past love. If the past amounts to clothes hung on a clothesline, you have to take them off. There are new clothes to hang on the line to be taken down again as soon as the sun has dried them. Must you cry over clothes that have had their day in the sun?