Abraham Lincoln is iconic. There’s no denying it. In times of unrest and uncertainty, he worked to keep the nation together, fighting when secession took place. A quiet man who thought things through before speaking, Lincoln is a man we can learn lessons from.

A little background on my history with Lincoln…From a young age, I’ve always been fascinated by good ole’ Honest Abe (he’s in my top 5 favorite presidents). In fact, I have a bobble head of him that my dad brought me from his trip to the capital. I did a book report on him in 3rd grade, and tried to do another in the 4th (my mom told me I needed to broaden my horizons, so I went with Ben Franklin). Looking back, my fascination with Lincoln is probably the beginning of my love for American History.

Now…lets get to the quote.

In life, the only way we can go is forward. There’s no going back. As scary as it sounds, we can’t change anything we’ve already done or said. The past is useless except for the fact that we can learn from it. Use it as an example of what worked, what didn’t, what we need to repeat, and what we need to avoid. I guess that’s why I love history so much…you can always learn from it.

As Lincoln said, despite his slow pace, he always walked forward. We can take this as a lesson similar to that in the old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. No matter how slow we develop or grow, whether in skill, personality, or progress, the only way to move is forward. It takes time to build a solid foundation, which is detrimental to continuing growing the structure.

Once a thing is finished, it’s hard to go back and re-do it. Almost impossible even. Lincoln presided over the nation in times of Civil War…it was hard to go backwards. With a warring nation, he needed to continue moving forward in-order to heal the nation. He had no chance of a do-over. It was one shot. Get it right or get out of office.

While we aren’t president of a fractured nation, we can take this into our own lives at a smaller scale. Lincoln called all the shots of the union. We call all the shots of our own lives. Like Lincoln, we don’t get any do-overs. This one life is all we have, so we HAVE to continue moving forward. You don’t want to waste time dwelling in what could have been or what you would have done differently. As I said earlier, only look back to learn. Lessons come from history, opportunity comes with the future. While it is unknown, you won’t figure it our until you get there. So keep moving forward…it’s the only way to go.