Enlightening Thought #13

Today, instead of plugging in the ear buds to my Zune and listening to my newest music downloads, I dug out my CD player. I slipped in an old mix CD a friend had made for me in middle school, and turned the volume up.

As I listened to the notes, the memories began to rush back into my head. Networks of connections that had been left untouched for years lit up once again in my mind, and the notes tightened and pulled on a strand of my heart. The rhythms reverberated through my body as the visualizations took me back to the innocent sunsets and magnificent fireworks of the summer before high school.



At first, I was afraid to let go of the present. What was in the here and now, I could deal with. The past was so distant and delicate that even the thought of it could drive painful stakes into the path of my life. It was not somewhere I wanted to go, nor did I want the memories to make me weak in the present.

But then I settled back and just let the memories flow through me. It was a wonderful feeling. The past is a part of who I am and always will be. Reminiscence can make me weak, but the lessons and wisdom will make me strong. It is my experiences that make up who I am, and the experiences that I must accept in order to be capable of living in the present and moving into the future.

And so I realized that

It's okay to lose yourself in your past once in a while.

Because the experiences we have are what make us unique and different, but also what connect us to the larger context of humanity. The present is just the departure of the past and the arrival of the future. Our memories are a part of who we are.