Thought of the Dave

When I was a kid (you know, way back when the world was just black and white – well before technicolor was invented), I loved playing video games. I’d ride my bicycle to a nearby indoor putt-putt course with an accompanying arcade; there I’d push quarter after quarter into the slots of these console games so that I could chew up all the dots while avoiding those ghosts that were chasing me around, I’d concern myself with blasting all these large space rocks coming at my ship, or I’d try to kill all these alien creatures as they slowly descended on me and my planet. I enjoyed the games – I don’t know that I’d ever consider myself an excellent gamesman where these were concerned, so I spent a lot of quarters – cause I was frequently losing my ‘lives’.

Eventually, gaming consoles caught on, allowing you to play some of these (near) arcade quality games from the comfort of your own home. I’d break out my Atari 2600 for hours and hours of entertainment. The best part was, I could do all the same things I’d mentioned earlier (and more), it didn’t require pockets full of quarters, and when my lives were lost – I could just hit the reset switch, and boom – brand-new game, brand-new start.

I came across a meme or received some snapchat from some one with the caption – Every day is a fresh start!  

On some level, I like and I agree with that, but, of course, that’s not 100%, entirely true. Unlike my Atari 2600, we don’t have the ability to hit the reset button, and just start completely fresh. My Atari had no memory, it had no way of recording my performance for each individual game I’d played; when I hit reset this game – for all my Atari knew, was the very first and only game I had ever played – and each successive game would be fall into that very same category. My Atari 2600 didn’t know I really was a terrible video game player. 

Life isn’t entirely like that. We have memories, the people around us have memories, records are kept, metrics are recorded, we have and we carry with us a history, record, a reputation. 

While we may not be able to erase and entirely disregard our mistakes, our missteps, our previous performance, our decisions, our choices, etc. – we also don’t have to be defined forever by them. 

Every day doesn’t represent a fresh, clean, brand-new slate ---- but it is an opportunity to draw a line, walk across that line, and say from this point forward I’m gonna be better, I’m gonna be different, I’m gonna grow, I’m gonna improve. We aren’t erasing or re-writing our past, but we have an opportunity to create the today’s and tomorrow’s that we want, and re-define who and what we are!