The past is reconciled, for me anyway, demons largely exorcised, or at least nullified – it was what it was. Move on. The future isn’t set, as John Connor once said, and we can’t possibly know what will happen – it will be what it will be. As for the present, it’s never perfect, but hopefully it’s acceptable, and you do what you have to do in order to do some of what you want to do – it is what it is. In the end, it all comes down to two songs. Firstly, Crosby Stills and Nash, ‘Teach Your Children’ …
You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good-bye.
Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.
And you, of tender years,
Can’t know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.
Teach your parents well,
Their children’s hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick’s the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.”
The second, as the title suggests, is this. It’s all you can do, really.
Alastair Swinnerton 