Memory Is A Mixed Bag
Good or bad, you are in many ways shaped by your memories. At any given moment, you are the sum total of what you’ve experienced, and the lessons you’ve learned from your passage through life to date. Without memory, you would learn nothing, remaining uninformed and clueless, no matter how rich and instructive your life events had been. Memory is your travelogue of life, a scrapbook filled with all the joy, the wonder, the pain and disappointment you’ve had touch you.
Surely, the good memories are much treasured, while the painful ones are reviled, yet often it is the most wickedly awful ones that proved the most enlightening. The person burdened by painful memories will curse them, wishing to have them fade away, and stop plaguing them. We all toy at times with the fanciful idea that life with a less sharp memory might be better. But would it? The memory impaired person suffers much, from missed appointments, to forgoten things at the grocery.
The fact that memories can become fuzzy and indistinct makes painful memories less horrid sometimes. The person who never loses a bit of acuity is made to relive the bad memories over and over. Few would relish that. We’d like to be able to remember where we put the car keys, or hid a surprise, but we don’t want to have to flawlessly recall the day our beloved pet died.
Some humans seem to possess a terrifingly perfect memory, able to recall every detail of a page they read forty years ago. Some seem less acute, but still are plauged by too much ability to remember the things they desperately wish to forget. If one never forgets, they remain tied to every hurt, every slight and evil word ever spoken to them. No one in their right mind would wish for such a fate. We are eager to remember the good, the pleasant, the joyful. The healthy person works hard to keep these alive, and to let the wicked ones go.
What about you? Are you trying to remember the old slights, the pain and hurt? Let it go. Either you’ve learned from it, or you never will, at least in this life. If you missed the lesson completely, relax, it will come back around, no matter how much you wish it wouldn’t! You’ll be better prepared if you hold fast to the good memories; there will always be more pain and suffering, so don’t hold to the old stuff! Work at capturing more good memories. Start by telling someone you love them, and don’t be stingy. Repeat it. Often. You’ll eventually have more good memories than bad to cling to.
Jack