A Burst of Memory

Sometimes we simply don’t remember. Do you remember everything good that happened in your life any more clearly than anything bad? Maybe it’s all there in the folds of the brain just waiting for a reason to remember. I know I’ve done things I don’t want to remember. There might be as many regrets as there are joys, but they are hidden from me except on rare occasions when something evokes it; makes it come out of hiding. Then, like a flash of lightening, I experience a deep emotion pang; sometimes of great joy, but just as often great sorrow. And I think about it for a while, wondering what to do with it, what to do with an unbidden memory that came out of hiding.

So now I’m faced with living in that memory for a short time. I’m thinking of how I could have done things differently without really changing the outcome. With the memory comes questions of what could have been. Robert Frost was a prolific writer, but one poem in particular comes to mind when these unbidden memories arise; “Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by.” Maybe we all took the one less traveled by hoping, perhaps as Frost did, to return and try the other road. But that doesn’t happen. We only get one life and the way we choose to live it is what makes the outcome unique. I can second guess, but I’ll never really know.

Might I have nurtured distant friendships better? Might I have chosen a different path and still come out in the same place?

I do have regrets. I wish I had been “more.” More kind, considerate, compassionate, giving, loving _ more of so many of the things that work together to make life more fulfilled. Yet, as I lived each day, this might have been what I thought I was doing. It’s only in hindsight that I see I could have done it so much better. But I am me, and all that I was is what made me … me. If I am not content with the outcome, I cannot go back and change it no matter how dearly I might want to. I can only work to make today better than the day before or the day before that.

Aha! A thought comes to me at this juncture. How can I change me? Can an old dog learn new tricks? Can I become more than the sum of my entire life? Am I destined to live this path and make the best of it? In truth, I have no answers. If age brings wisdom, it brings it slowly. Just when I think I have stumbled upon a truth, life throws a curve and I’m not so sure.

Maybe – just maybe – I will live long enough for wisdom to be the better part of me.