Memories

It's dark, and the moon was hard to see. The temperature is 56 degrees fahrenheit and today is Thursday.

How is it that the first month of the new calendar year is almost at its end? That's the question. It repeats each month, too. Life is now less about creating memories, and more about having stored a few. The energy and the activity have shifted so there is less of an interest in having new experiences; more of an interest in cherishing the few things that are familiar.

In memories, we know that there is a chance to revisit laughter, sadness, and maybe the feeling one has when something very surprising happens. There, we can have conversations with old friends and see people who no longer are in the material world (or at least, no longer in our part of the world). Our memories are places where we might retrieve the incident that made us laugh, and still gives us a chuckle. We can allow ourselves to see our foolishness and not take everything so seriously. Life kept going and we kept right along.

For some, memories are best forgotten. That is the truth. Some events in life are really not worth revisiting and for each person, the relationship to memories is unique. Some will lose plenty of them - like my dad, whose Alzheimer's has removed his ability to recall names and relations. It happens.

In the now, being conscious that everything and everyone you encounter is making a new memory might help to remind you of the preciousness of every moment. Things shift in an instant and can take a person's life from joy to tragedy in the blink of an eye. It is also true that the shift can lift a heavy burden with a kind gesture or word. It is also true that you can be completely oblivious to the fact that every moment is a chance to become the one you have always wanted to be.

We forget.

The forgetting is in more than losing an object that you put down somewhere and can't find. The forgetting is in losing touch with the fact that now is all we really ever have. And the place of the past is in memories. It is to worthwhile to be reminded of this fact: The memories are not real. But the now is. And in the now, there is an infinite number of ways to affect past and future. Memories remind us of this.