Does Memory Inspire You Or Keep You From Reaching For More?

For the briefest of moments I wondered if someone had replaced the mirror in the bathroom with something that belonged in a fun house because it was the only possible explanation for what I saw.

And then a giant wave of reality slammed int0 shore and a voice said you better step up your game or your scale will weep uncontrollably.

So I put in five miles of walking in what my weather app said was 33 degree weather knowing that I could have pushed myself to do another three.

I might have done it but a voice inside my head said this is one of those moments where it just doesn’t matter because what is going to come will happen regardless of any effort I do or do not put into it.

Sometimes when the silence feels loudest and absence most profound a bell goes off and I recognize it is not memory gently tugging on my sleeve, but reality.

Off we go to meet in the echoes of the future.

Does Memory Inspire You Or Keep You From Reaching For More?

Inside a room I sit and listen to someone describe a beautiful mind to me. They tell me about how complex it is and how he takes a more expansive view of the world than most.

“I think that is probably why he doesn’t like the timed tests, he sees more possibilities.”

“That might be true, but most of those timed tests are useless. Unless we are talking about specific situations in which speed is a necessity there is little use. I don’t tell him to measure twice and cut once because it is instinctive to him.

But me, not so much.

I always figure I can adjust and fix as I go.”

That is just how it works.

If you ask for better than that I can provide a description to some but not all because not everyone get’s it.

If I hold your hand and you feel an electric charge and I say that I just know or see things you might nod your head and in agreement because you understand.

Or you might say it is the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard.

That is part of why I wonder if sometimes memory inspires you to move one direction or another because when you understand you move one way and when you don’t you go another.

*****

Later on a 17-year-old boy talked with me about what I had heard, said and shared and scrunched up his face when he thought my explanation didn’t quite make sense.

I nodded my head, said he was right and told him sometimes life is so very strange.

He told me he could sense I hadn’t shared everything and I told him some things can’t be shared, they have to be experienced.

When he told me that sounded like a cop out I nodded and told him I felt the same way at 17 and sometimes still feel the same.

“Dad, what does that mean?”

“It means I don’t always get the full story of what happened or why people do as they do either.

Sometimes my BS detector goes full bore and I want to demand explanations and reasons that make sense to me, but that is not how it works.

Sometimes you have to play the game and understand life is filled with lots of silly and ridiculous stuff in which people do things for reasons that make no sense. Teenagers are wonderful examples of this.”

He shook his head, rolled his eyes and told me he wasn’t happy with what I had said. I said I know and told him that when you push the river the water runs past, through, over and around you.

“Figure out how to harness the energy of the river and life gets to be much easier. Focus upon the successes you have had and not upon the failures.

You have a perfect record for surviving every bad day.”

Some answers are immutable and others…aren’t.