This is the opening verse of Berton Baley’s inspirational poem, “Start Where You Stand.” Many people are trapped in time; they are stuck in the past. They cling to their failures and successes. None of us can re-write the beginnings of our stories—that’s revisionist history—but we can write the rest of our stories, how they will end.
Start where you stand and never mind the past,
The past won’t help you in beginning new,
If you have left it all behind at last
Why, that’s enough, you’re done with it, you’re through;
This is another chapter in the book,
This is another race that you have planned,
Don’t give the vanished days a backward look,
Start where you stand.