There is a fun ride in Disney World® (and in Disneyland®) called the Haunted Mansion. You are in a slow moving ridecar and meander through the Haunted Mansion. Toward the end of the ride, you hear the narrator tell you to "Beware of Hitchhiking Ghosts" and you see an image of three ghosts hitchhiking. You pass a mirror in the final part of the ride and you see yourself and one of the "ghosts" appearing to be riding with you. It's all in fun and you know it's not real.
Thinking about that ride and the "hitchhiking ghosts" made me think about real-life ghosts. No, I'm not talking about spirits or ghosts from "another world," I'm talking about ghosts from our past. The ghosts of regret, past mistakes, past pain or even bad memories. These are the real-life ghosts we need to beware of.
You see, we all have things in our lives that can pop up at any point and try to "hitchhike" along while we try to live our lives. Sometimes we don't even know that we've allowed them to come along for the ride. We may even have thought we were "finished" with whatever has reappeared and are surprised to find that it's back on our minds, weighing us down.
It is difficult to live our everyday lives while carrying the "ghosts" of yesterday. And we shouldn't.
We can learn from past regrets or mistakes and change things, going forward, and we can seek help for those things in our past that caused pain to help us know how to live, going forward.
Today and tomorrow are new days. In order to make the most of them, we need to truly live.
Life is an amazing ride, live it to the fullest....and beware of those "hitchhiking ghosts!"
