End of the Week Thankfulness
Wednesday is my moment in the week when I particularly go for a memory of yesteryear to share with you all but since I have had a whole week of memory gathering with my photo sorting, organizing, and stacking, this subject is definitely on my mind. My dining room table is so full of photos, I am beginning to wonder where we are going to eat when our guests arrive next weekend. And there are two shelves of photo books yet to look in!
What I am trying to say is that memories are a good thing, something to be thankful for. I am thankful for all the people that go into making the memories and places I have been and the sights, sounds, and even smells that come back to me when I look at these old photos.
One good thing I have learned this week that I want to carry with me forward is that it seems to me I have been afraid of memories. Afraid that I will feel the hurt/anger/disappointment that sometimes plays around the edges of my head when I start to remember.
What I found out was that if I would just go into the memory, talk about it outloud even (mostly to myself), shake it up a little and allow myself to wallow in it, I would more often than not find beauty and delight in the memory along with the hard bits. I have discovered that by shaking the crummy bits off the memory like I would a tablecloth, I could see it more for what it was and reclaim the good bits.
I did find that there are some memories that jarred me into getting up, dusting myself off and going to another part of the house for a while...then I could come back and look at it again and deal with it.
When I get right down to the editing I will start filling the dustbin with pictures that just gotta go. I found some blurry, browny, grey, blueish photos of somewhere in time that if they had not been with others I would never know what story they were supposed to be telling. Some of those have already hit the bin.
Thankfulness is a great broom to sweep over memories often just to remind yourself that there is good in our pasts as there is in the future.
Will you think or do anything today that is worthy of future memory? Robert Grudin
The heart always has room for beautiful memories.
God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. James Barrie
Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. Cicero
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather
Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone. Wil Shakespeare
Tell me, what memory can you share with me that you have been able to find beauty in even though it has been tainted with some sad?
What I am trying to say is that memories are a good thing, something to be thankful for. I am thankful for all the people that go into making the memories and places I have been and the sights, sounds, and even smells that come back to me when I look at these old photos.
One good thing I have learned this week that I want to carry with me forward is that it seems to me I have been afraid of memories. Afraid that I will feel the hurt/anger/disappointment that sometimes plays around the edges of my head when I start to remember.
What I found out was that if I would just go into the memory, talk about it outloud even (mostly to myself), shake it up a little and allow myself to wallow in it, I would more often than not find beauty and delight in the memory along with the hard bits. I have discovered that by shaking the crummy bits off the memory like I would a tablecloth, I could see it more for what it was and reclaim the good bits.
I did find that there are some memories that jarred me into getting up, dusting myself off and going to another part of the house for a while...then I could come back and look at it again and deal with it.
When I get right down to the editing I will start filling the dustbin with pictures that just gotta go. I found some blurry, browny, grey, blueish photos of somewhere in time that if they had not been with others I would never know what story they were supposed to be telling. Some of those have already hit the bin.
Thankfulness is a great broom to sweep over memories often just to remind yourself that there is good in our pasts as there is in the future.
Will you think or do anything today that is worthy of future memory? Robert Grudin
The heart always has room for beautiful memories.
God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. James Barrie
Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things. Cicero
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Willa Cather
Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone. Wil Shakespeare
Tell me, what memory can you share with me that you have been able to find beauty in even though it has been tainted with some sad?
I went through my photos about 3 years ago-some were painful to look at and some brought happy thoughts of days gone by, and some were bittersweet. The ones that were painful went by the way side and the bittersweet were put in another box to look at a later time when I was ready. Memories are wonderful--and we grow from all of them, the sad and the happy both have lessons to teach us. Thank you for the reminder of the goodness of all memories.
ReplyDeleteI was cleaning out the closet in my spare room and came across two boxes of old photos. Even though most of the people in those photos are no longer in my life for one reason or another, it made me smile to see them :-)
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