It's necessary to always reflect on the past, as it gives us #perspective for the present. #QuoteADay #Day214 #edchat #edu #Remember
My youngest daughter had her baby naming today. In the Jewish religion, this is a ceremony where a child (usually a girl) is given a Hebrew name. It is a joyous celebration,and one that is both happy (for the child being named) and bittersweet (since the child is named after a relative, or relatives, who passed).
My daughter was named after two wonderful women on my wife's side: her great-great grandmother, and her great-grandmother (Hebrew names usually are composed of two parts). My daughter's great-grandmother (my wife's grandmother) was an amazing woman. Since both my grandmothers had passed before I reached the age of five, I hadn't really known the love of a grandmother. My wife's grandmother adopted me as her own, and I miss her greatly. While I never had the opportunity to meet my wife's great-grandmother, I hear that she was an amazing person as well.
Reflecting on the lives that others have lived often helps us to better understand the lives that we are living now. I can only hope that we can raise my daughter to be as amazing as these two women were. Hopefully, when we think of her Hebrew name, we'll recall how special her relatives were, and by that nature, it will remind us (and our daughter, as she gets older) to honor them with the qualities and characteristics they exhibited so well.
Being connected to our past is one of the best ways for us to succeed in the present. When we say that the past is in the past, we are forgetting that a large part of who we are is due to who people were before us.
So, while "what's done is done" we should never forget that what we did (and those we knew) can be reflected on to help us lead more effectively today and tomorrow.
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