Follow Your Passions

“The future influences the present just as much as the past.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

The moment something occurs, it has occured. It’s not going to occur, it already has. That places it in the past. You can’t influence it, you can’t change it. Sometimes you can take action “in the now” to mend something that is broken, or affect a better situation for the future, but you can’t alter the fact that what was done, was done.

I know people, people I talk to every day, who spend a lot of time being concerned about things they have no ability to influence, because they were in the past. They had a “bad day” where many things didn’t go right, and they are spending their “now” fretting about it, being downtrodden about it. If I may be so bold, this is not a particularly productive approach to looking at the past.

Now, what I don’t mean to imply is there is no value in considering the past. There is a great deal we can learn from the past so that we can apply that knowledge to bettering our now and our future. Whereas you cannot influence the past, there is little else you can do with the future but to influence it so that when it influences you as it approaches your present, it does so in a way more in line with your passions in life.

Let me share a rule I live by. If you desire something more than everyone else combined desires the opposite, then your desire is significantly more likely to come to pass. By desiring it, you are influencing the future. But others can do the same. So your desire has to be strong, and it has to push you to take action in the now, learn what you need to and can from the past, and apply your desire as much as you are capable of to the future. Live this way, keeping a positive attitude while avoiding wasting energy on negative thoughts about things you have no ability to control (like the past), and you will find your future filled with more and more of the kinds of things you wish to reap.