P= Past, present, and perspective

Up until 2 years ago I remembered very little of my childhood. When I first started to remember things, I wanted to stop. The memories were mostly bad. Then other memories started to rise up too. Happy ones. Ones that would make me giggle. Memories that would transport me back to my grandpa's farm, or the creek we played in near our house, or my brother taking me for rides on his bike. Then, the bad memories did not have such a powerful affect, because there was something to balance them with.

I really have no control over when a memory will arise. Last week, I had a very powerful memory from a past Christmas. One that knocked me on my ass for a bit. A memory that made me weep and one that explained so many of the things that I often feel this time of year. Around the same time a friend on Facebook posted a quote the gist of which is "You can't control whether or not winter comes but you can control what you plant in the spring". This gave me an idea.

I started to think of life, my life, like a movie. This is my movie and I get to choose. Not every scene that is shot makes it in to the final movie. That does not mean it was never shot, it just means that somehow it did not fit in to the final product and ended up on the cutting room floor to be discarded. I decided that I would much rather remember Mina toasting marshmallows over a candle, or Ari jumping up and down for joy over a new discovery. I decided that I now have so many good scenes to replace these other ones with, even the ones that have not risen out of my memory yet. And that once I feel the memory and look at the pattern it may have to show me, I am going to replace it.

This does not mean I am going to start denying the material facts of where I have been. I actually have lived in that reality and it is not a better place. It means, I am going to focus my energy on elevating my own perspective. On actively choosing to stop seeing the world through the lens that was created in my head so long ago and to move in to a frame of mind where any scene can be cut and replaced with something more beneficial to living a better life.