Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes I'll remember a dream or a scene from a book as vividly as if they had really happened, and other times things that happened in my real life are gone from my memory altogether.
This Spring, after a seemingly endless winter, both in the outside world and in my own personal emotional climate, my memory has been especially active. As I walk in the evening, I've tried to be more aware of beautiful weather, the color of the sky, the scent of a blooming tree. And, in return, I've noticed things that prompt the return of memories long forgotten--the time I rescued a beached fish in the tiny brook that runs through the park, an especially perfect evening when I walked farther than I ever had before and wound up in an entirely unexpected place.
Those things we do by rote, by habit, are so deeply ingrained in our brains and our muscle memory that our waking minds are hardly aware of them at all. How many of us can swear, with absolute certainty, that we remember closing the garage door this morning, or brushing our teeth? Yet we undoubtedly performed these tasks. When we get in the car in the morning our minds are already planning the first phone call of the day, the first cup of coffee, and we drive to work on autopilot unless something happens to jolt us out of our routine.
Many times I've wished that I had been more aware, more present, when things were going on rather than remembering them imperfectly later. But we're so busy, and we try to do so many things at once. We don't want to miss anything, so we sacrifice quality for quantity. My friend Micki decided years ago to stop taking photographs when she travels. She said that when she was taking pictures, she was concentrating only on taking pictures, not on enjoying the experience itself. I think there's wisdom in that decision. Consider the amateur photographers who spend their vacations behind the lens of a video camera, oblivious to everything happening around them.
Lately I'm trying to be "awake and aware," open to experiences as they happen, embracing life as it turns into memory. It can then be relived over and over if I choose, or pushed to the back of my mind with the rest of the cobwebs if it's something I decide not to cultivate. But even the unpleasant memories teach us something, help us remember that we're alive, and not just going through the motions.
