“What’s done is done.” These famous words from Shakespeare’s Macbeth still apply to our lives over 400 years later. There isn’t a point in living in the past; you can’t undo it. Living in the moment means to move on with your life and forget about past troubles and mistakes. Live each day as it was the first day of your life. You can’t undo it anymore.
During Future City, I took a temporary leave since I was going to be gone on a vacation to New Mexico. I took the leave early because I was being repeatedly called a “retard.” I felt it was unfair because another teammate decided to bring a friend and wouldn’t get anything done. I apparently didn’t do anything right and their ideas were “always better,” even though they were not even working. I scheduled most of the meetings and felt I was doing way too much. Annoyed at their lack of work ethic, I kicked them out of my house since they weren’t getting anything done right anyways and wanted to see how they would fare without me.
When I came back a week later, after my trip to New Mexico, I took a peek at their model. It had very little to do with the essay “we” wrote together. I proceeded to criticize the model, but they replied that I should have come to the meetings. I argued that they wouldn’t listen to me anyways, but they claimed that I should have told them their model was bogus. I saw no point in arguing and instead told them they should redo the model since it did not meet specifications. They simply replied, “What’s done is done.” I then told them again what had to be in the model and why it should be there. After explaining, I went back home.
Eventually, the model was completed. I admit that I had done very little to the model between the time I kicked my teammates out of the house and the completion. All I did was try to come up with a moving part. Therefore, at the end, in my opinion, it barely reflected the essay. As a matter of fact, it looked a lot like New York with the buildings more spread apart, not a futuristic city with the technologies we talked about. I was still angry at the sight of the monotone model and went home to work on my part of the presentation. We never rehearsed the full thing.
The night before the competition, I decided that we wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore. Because we never rehearsed, I decided that “what’s done is done” and decided to call everyone on the team about how we would act the next day, the orders we would speak in, and how we would present. Although I was against the whole thing, we couldn’t change anything the night before the competition. For one hour, we all discussed how we would act, what we would wear, etc. That night, I felt a little more secure about the next day. The day of the competition, although we made up a lot of things, we took second place.
“What’s done is done” means that you cannot change the past. Living in the moment means to live without thinking of the past. When something bad has happened, forget about it and move on. Live like there is no tomorrow and feel as if it was the last day to prove something. There is no point in sulking over the past. Live your days well. Many people nowadays commit suicide because of dwelling in the past, either with relationships, how others treat them, etc. With living in the moment, you forget about everything that has happened in the past and live your life as it was the first day of your life. It will lead you to be a happy, successful person.
*Note: This was a recent essay for my GT class. Future City was a competition where I regret having two of the partners I had.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Can you imagine if you all got along? Perhaps 1st prize? In hindsight…this was a blessing in disguise because you learned something far more important than winning a competition.
I respectfully disagree on a part of this topic. It’s not good to completely forget the past, because you can learn from it. I’m not saying that your teammates were all being the best team members, but you probably angered them in some way, which made them not want to work with you. Perhaps you just had the wrong approach to get them to do things.
Next time, if you happen to do a project like this, try a completely different approach to get things done.
Remember, those who don’t understand and act on the past are doomed to repeat it.
You’re right. The reason they acted that way was because I was a bit bossy and told them what a winning team would look like.
That’s why I forgot about the past. It was all “Ian you’re doing it wrong.”
So I guess if I let them work I could have countered this. Which I did. And they came up with something bad.
Deadly accturae answer. You’ve hit the bullseye!