“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
More often than not I go back to this quote by Haruku Murakami, and each time I am reminded of this quote, it brings with itself another level of clarity into my own life.
Memories are always connoted with positive experiences, we talk about happy times , we talk about moments that warm our heart. Majority of recollections are always about the good.
But I wonder what about the bad times?
The times when we went through trials and tribulations.
The times we were at the end of the rope and somehow held onto life.
Whether we acknowledge or not, our stellar character is always built by our struggles. We gain a wider perspective through the things that pained us.
We get a deeper look into ourselves through the times we thought that our circumstances had finished our confidence.
We become a finer version of ourselves with everything that is a shade of black and grey.
So why is it that we don’t recall such times, we don’t acknowledge the fleeting memory of a time of true test.
I personally fail to understand myself as well, I always have a soft corner for everything that takes me back to the moment when life was the most lovable.
But when anything remotely reminds me of tough days all I do is run from it.
And most of the people I know do the same.
We celebrate the achievements, we diss the failures.
It’s a human tendency to avoid reliving pain.
But this is a thought that has been on my mind for a long time. What if we rewired our thought process?
For instance if a picture reminds you of a time you want to forget, why not look at the picture and then look at your current circumstance and be grateful that you pushed through to get here.
Why not associate gratitude with grave situations?
Because I believe truly that we persevere and prosper with our inner strength and we should always be grateful for our journey.
Memories are a reminder of the journey , so instead of being selective in choosing to acknowledge the parts of our life that have gone.
We should learn to welcome every memory with an open mind.
Jubilant memories give us strength to go on and unpleasant memories give us hope that we can and we will always endure and make it to the other side.