Reckoning

He got an email that at some point had the line: We can be reinvigorated for the future by a reckoning with the past. Then he thought about the word reckon. To come to terms with right? No need for Webster’s. Come to terms with??? Well what isn’t reflected in the words on the page is that it really to hurts to come to terms with the past…for some of us. It hurts to find yourself thinking about the past and apologizing to people that aren’t alive anymore…during your morning commute. Reckoning with the past opens you up to pain in a way that no surgeon with a scalpel can. Reckoning holds up the humanity mirror to your face and frightens you with no suspense or “other” lurking in alleyways or dark interiors. It is encapsulated; just you looking at you and you wonder if you are up to the task of knowing yourself. Of knowing what you are and for what you stand. Sure, they tell you it is worthwhile. But some of us haven’t taken that trip and with all due respect, why should we trust YOU? How do you know our experiences will be the same? What if I hold up the mirror and it doesn’t crack but I do? What if the past is too much to reckon with? What if I am not you and this little experiment of yours damages me beyond repair. Must I be reinvigorated for the future? Can’t the future just be matter-of-fact and lacking vigor? Maybe that suits me just fine. Heidegger said that man secretes time. That all of this hustle and bustle for the future creates the future. The future and the past are bi-products of a busy present. Well I may not hustle and bustle like you do but maybe, just maybe, deep down in places you don’t like to talk about at parties, you know my future isn’t yours and maybe, at the end of the day when you know the wolves await your sleep, you … 

[cut to interior room – rocking chair rocking – shot of feet on floor – camera pans up, old man smiling, looking at photograph book]

…were right. And maybe I reckoned.