How we love our memories!  As we sift through our memories each day, we sometimes remember the past fondly or grit our teeth angrily.  Loving memories revive feelings of joy, fondness, laughter and comfort.  Difficult memories raise our blood pressure, and fill us with disappointment and rage.  The memories we have are uniquely ours, and they serve a role in our spiritual lives, sometimes helpful, sometimes limiting.  We explore memories in this issue.

 

How Memories Serve Us

            No matter the type of memory you have, it reconnects you with your past.  You’re able to relive a situation and/or a relationship, sometimes with vague images, other times with brilliant clarity.  When you miss a loved one, you are able to call up pictures of love and intimacy, and you might feel less alone.  At other times you’ll realize that a memory is only a dream, and you’ll miss the person even more.

 

            When unpleasant memories arise, you may reject them or obsess about them.  You may choose to indulge the recollection, reminding yourself about how you were treated unjustly, how you were hurt, how you let someone down, or even punish yourself for your role in the situation.  To some degree, spending time with a memory can be restorative or debilitating, or highlight an embarrassing or exultant moment.  One thing to note, however, is that when you dwell in a memory, you are unengaged from your present.

 

How Memories Can Isolate Us

            Memories in and of themselves are simply what they are—neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong.  The way you allow memories to function in your life determines the way they either help you or limit you.  When you dwell on a memory that has caused you anger or resentment, you may consciously or subconsciously use the memory to isolate yourself from others.  I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard a person say (and even said myself), “I’ll never let that happen again.  If you’ve said this, you may find you focus your energy on protecting yourself from life, rather than engaging it. If you are in a demanding period of your life, you may decide to spend a lot of your time hiding in your memories, as a way to avoid life. You may use a memory as a reason to avoid risk-taking, to hesitate making new friends, to protect yourself from disappointments.

 

How We Get Stuck in Our Memories

            Memories can be so engaging, so much fun to recall and relive or obsess and be angry about.  And spending time in your memories can be helpful.  When you experience great loss, they may provide you with solace.  When you’ve made a mistake, you can use the experience to evaluate your actions and plan on different steps in the future.  The problem arises when you spend most of your time stuck in your memories, and you are either unable or unwilling to begin to re-engage the present.  The struggle is recognizing when you are lost in your memories and have abandoned living and appreciating your own life.  

 

            You can ask yourself, though, how often you are drifting in the past, and how much time you are spending in the present.  Have you begun to notice that you talk more about the past than what is happening in your life right now?  Are you spending any time with others?  Have you started to have periods of pleasure with the present?  Do you pursue activities that can engage you with life?  Have you reached out to others who may also be lost in the past and need help becoming connected to their lives?  It allows you to reflect on your circumstances, and on whether you are relating to life.  When you take these steps, you can help others appreciate their lives, both in the past, and right now.

 

            You don’t have to take these steps alone.  Ultimately, spirit gives you the gift to heal yourself and to be present.  When you feel sad, spirit can comfort.  When you feel angry, spirit can calm.  When you feel lost, spirit can find you.  And even when you feel alone, spirit reminds you that you are never truly alone.