Advice, Mental Frame of Time, Dante, and Lumberjack Pants

Two days before my birthday this year, my dad gave me a very wise piece of advice.  He said that I should worry about myself and not worry about other people.  He said that worrying about other people does not do me any good.

People will do what they want to do.  I can't make someone act how I want them to act or make other people make the best decisions.  In fact, I cannot know what the best decision is for someone else.  Everyone has different values, needs, and whatnot that I can't possibly know.  The only person I can know completely is myself.

As such, I will keep trying to put my life together.  Maybe if I fix it up to a point of at least semi-satisfaction, then I'll feel better about myself and other aspects of life (like love and sanity) will fall into place.  

I have also read somewhere that people tend to focus on the past and future and less so on the present.  Given this belief that, "if I fix my life, the future will be brighter" is living in the future.  There have been countless works suggesting that living in the present moment is an art and provides more happiness than dwelling on the past and continuing to say internally that, "life will be better when this or that happens".  

Yet, reflection on a person's experience in life is inevitable for everyone.  Nobody can be desensitized to everything around them and expect to move forward with the same benefits that past experience can offer like the learning of life lessons through mistakes, obstacles, and great victory.  

And how can one not wonder at the prosperity of the future?  For some people, it's this hope for a better future that gets them through their day.  People want their hard work and sustained efforts to be rewarded.  Nobody wants to suffer over and over again as if they were in one of Dante's Infernal Circles of Hell.  (Well, maybe there are some people who would like that.  Controllable fantasies aside, people do not want pain unless there is a gain to be had from such endurance.)

As such, everyone just keeps moving forward in hopes that things will work out.  Some might look to a Lord of some kind.  Others might just sharpen their saw and put on their Lumberjack pants.  But we're all living life to the best of our ability and in the ways that speak to us as individuals.