My Now Is Never Going Back Again

 "...Been down one time
Been down two time
Mmm

I'm never going back again..."

–Fleetwood Mac, Never Going Back Again

"Dad, this is my new favorite Fleetwood Mac song," Bryce said. Both our kids love music, especially our youngest, Bryce. In 2025, they started listening to Fleetwood Mac and fell in love with the Rumors album, an album that's now over 48 years old.  

We listened to it the other night while my family played a game and I fixed dinner, and I just couldn't get it out of my head. My wife Amy hates when that happens, but I don't mind it as much because certain lyrics will rattle around in my brain dislodging memories and helping me reframe personal insights. Song lyrics, poems, favorite prose passages -- all are my soul's food for thought.

This time of year there are those who make New Year's resolutions. Goals for the year. Life changes to make. Behaviors to modify. Bad habits to end and better ones to begin. I remember when my mom used to ask us to share our new year resolutions and to try and articulate the why of them. But I don't remember us ever checking in on our progress throughout the year, or reviewing the old resolutions when we made new ones in yet another new year.

We like to think of a new year as a fresh start, but the reality is, the only fresh start that matters is the now. There's a Rush song called Ceiling Unlimited with the lyrics "changes never end, never end, winding like an endless river, the time is now again" (written by one of my favorite writers, Neal Peart). Time is always now again. The past has happened and the future holds endless potential, but it's the now again where impactful change can be made, should be made, is only made. No matter if that's January 1 or June 30. 

How many times in my life did I make resolutions I never kept? Too many to count. Past trauma, addiction, selfishness, laziness, being biologically hardwired to make self-destructive decisions, feeling like I can do whatever I want when I want -- all things that can fill us with uncomfortable past reflections as we long for better futures. 

That doesn't mean there weren't good times and that real positive changes didn't occur. For me, there were and they did. In all my learning and healing over the years, and my recent years of regular meditation, personal discovery and growth is contingent on understanding and pivoting on past failure. But if you've acquiesced to the hardwiring of making self-destructive decisions with very little redemptive qualities, then you've lost the positive possibility of now. Something that's celebrated in mainstream literature, cinema, and television today. We've stopped letting go. Instead, we keep letting it rot and say we didn't have a choice.

However, we always have a choice. Even those with addiction problems know there's always a choice, a choice to not choose the destructive thing -- the drinking, smoking, gambling, etc. And that can lead to more choices of finding the support needed to sustain the healing. 

Making positive, mindful choices and letting go of what no longer serves us in the now benefits our own personal growth, and the wellbeing of others, and it isn't new. It's the spiritual backbone of religions and faiths going back thousands of years. 

For me, life used to be one step forward and two steps back. It seemed easier that way, like my fate was a weight of conflicting circumstances I had no control over, so damn the consequences of choice. Now, no matter what happens, it will always be one step forward, an ongoing resolution of living wellness. I especially thank my wife for instilling this in me and our children. My now is never going back again. 

Our Giving Tree

"And the tree was happy..."

—Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree

Sometimes I think about how change swirls around me at the speed of light. Imperceptible but omnipresent. Deconstructing and reconstructing at the subatomic level leaving in its wake an indefinite number of possibilities of what could be from what was and what is. How those changes impact my life and all the decisions I make each day that splinter into a million different potential alternate realities. 

Sometimes I think too much. Always have. 

Thankfully there are immediate mindful constants, the loving anchors around me that ground me to the now: my wife, our daughters, our pets, our home, our trees. One tree in particular. The tree that my wife Amy gave me.

Twenty-four years earlier, shortly after we met, I had these big beautiful grown trees outside of my second-story apartment balcony. I don't remember what they were exactly (maybe , but they'd been there for a long time with their roots pushing up on the sidewalk below.

The city decided the trees had to go, so they were cut down, the stumps removed, and the new cement sidewalks were poured. That's when we etched our initials in the wet cement, but that didn't last; years later the sidewalk was replaced again where our initials had once dried. 

Back to when the trees were cut down, though. Amy had bought me a wonderful present: a young Japanese maple in a pot. She knew how disappointed I was that the trees were removed and wanted me to have my own tree on my balcony. 

We had the tree for years when we moved into together, and while it did grow a little, it wasn't going to grow beyond the confines of its pot. I hoped someday it would have a yard of its own. 

When we bought our house a few years later, we finally had a backyard that we could call our own. At the time we were not planning on having children, and our small home and backyard was perfect for us. It was a new development at the time and the backyard was just weeds and rocky ground. We transformed it ourselves and planted the Japanese maple in the corner of our backyard. If it lived and grew, it would fit in nicely with the other maples planted in our new neighborhood's front yards and common areas. 

Our tree then grew and thrived. We changed our minds about having children and had two wonderful daughters who grew and thrived along with our tree. Even after the time we tried to trim the tree back ourselves and ended up hacking the heck out of it thinking we might've killed it. And even after our pet bunny gnawed on the base of the tree before we wrapped chicken wire around it. 

And even with the speed-of-light changes that have happened to our family throughout the years, it's continued to grow and thrive. If we ever left this house, which there were times we considered it, we knew couldn't take the tree with us. But we haven't left, and I don't think we ever will. 

Now, 24 years after Amy gave me this tree in a pot, it gives us a canopy of loving comfort. Every year it grows full and lush, then the leaves turn brown and red and fall to the ground, only to sprout again each spring. Unlike Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree, we've only taken from it the constant comfort that it gives us year after year. That's why our giving tree anchors me. Otherwise, we just let it be; our tree is happy.