What’s real? What’s not? What I see and perceive may not match with my Inside View. Memories, and the ability to conjure up visions of the future from snippets of the past, well, that’s my inside view. I’ve repeated something a lot lately that I heard about a week ago:
We are not what we are,
We are what we pretend to be.
Our memories are a lot of “make-believe,” where some are real, others are false, and we create what we want the past to have looked like. Regardless of the reality of what the past may have actually been like. Somewhere in my memory is a description of how memories are shaded with the present every time we recall them, updated, and then stored till we remember them differently than before.
How do we reclaim reality from our minds? It may be an impossible task? We may be stuck with only jumbled-up pieces of a puzzle that is impossible to assemble.
SnapShot
Stored in my files is a recent article describing how we mess up our mind’s ability to remember things. How? By constantly taking pictures with our mobile devices.
Quick. Frame it. Snap it. Whew! I’ll remember that moment!
But pictures cannot do justice to what our mind perceives. Those who prefer a movie over the original book will only grasp what the director says you must, and me? Well, I paint a pretty vivid picture with my own ability. Will a film do justice to what I create in my mind? Seldom. My big problem? Describing what I see from my inside view to someone who is waiting for a pretty good story. It’s often easier to share a photo. Essentially, we lack the ability to describe what we see and perceive.
I won’t tell you how I cringe when someone pulls out a bulky box of photos or slides to show me their latest trip. Run for the hills! Describe for me your experience, and with words that build the image, well, I’ll listen to you for hours!
Okay. Maybe not hours. But you’ll have a better-focused listener than someone who views what your mobile device decided to capture. After all, most professional photos are enhanced to give a better result. Ask any photographer working on making a good living from their photoshoot! Sometimes you add filters to produce a better product!
Remember When
I walked the property this morning looking for a debris field from my neighbors going wild with professional-grade fireworks. Or so it seemed. Then I remembered what it was like as a kid when we would daisy-chain firecrackers together and make it sound like a war was going on! Fun! Take ’em apart, scrape out the gunpowder and build a better bomb! Exciting! I even remember making a pipe gun that would shoot pebbles. Blow up an ant bed. Simulate canon fire and blow up an old toy. Try to figure out how to protect the fuse and make a hole in a pool of water!
We would use every scrap of imagination to make our own exciting celebration of the holiday better!
When a neighbor decides to party with guns and fireworks, and the dogs are frightened, and the chickens may not lay eggs for a day, well, it’s too close to my back yard. A few angered words land on the doorstep…Revenge? Call the cops? After all, the country has made it illegal for the tinderbox of vegetation after triple-digit record-breaking temperatures! Call ’em names! Bring the dogs inside till midnight (official stopping time.) Hope for better egg production the day after.
Then I remember when. Was it so long ago that I cannot remember the thrill of a fireworks stand? Is it age? Or a feeling of being more responsible? I now own property to protect. When an M-80, M-120, or whatever the largest “boom” you can blast rattles the bones, then I become overprotective. My own memories go out of sight, out of mind. I’m ready to take matters into my own hands.
Making Better Memories
We know this truth to be self-evident… All memories are not created equally. Through the years of my kids, I remember making promises that never quite found their way into fulfillment. Equally, I know that we sometimes focused more on what was important for “us” and not necessarily “them.” Guilty. Are their memories different than mine? To hear them talk, then the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” Is this so bad? Probably not. Since we all have memories from different perspectives, what I enjoyed maybe only be for me. No one else enjoys it as I do. Can I make it better for others? Sure. I have to remember it’s not just about me.
Back in the day of that new fangled technology of cameras, people oohed and ahhed over every photo. Special, they were. But then you find them stuffed in drawers at an “antique” or “resale” store and wonder why they lost their attractiveness—life changes. Technology improves. Who wants to hang on to reel-to-reel, 8-tracks, or even cassette tapes? Whoa. I forgot CD’s, DVDs and all the other thumb drive products.
What might get lost in the shuffle of a move will never get lost in the corridors of my mind. Memories. Misty. Water-colored. Wait. Please don’t get me singing!
How do you make better memories? Join the flow of what others need, but take good mental images of the moment. Store them. Savor them. Share when necessary.
Until my mind lets loose of reality, my memories will be my mainstay on living with the past reality, comparing it to the present, and working toward the future. Be responsible. Make better memories with the best storage device God gave to any of his creations. You.
A Spiritual Thought
God does not need artifical means to remember the past, operate in your present life, or prepare everything for you future. From the beginning covenant he made with Noah, God continually reminds us that He will remember what is necessary to recall, and forget those things which are not important for the future. Going back thousands of years, the purpose of the rainbow with all its pretty colors has nothing to do with the movement that uses it to represent them. It’s not Trademarked, Copyrighted, or Owned…
It’s God’s plan for us to use it remember His Memory.
God Promises to Remember, and he gives us a token for us to remember. He will see it and remember. What is the token? The Rainbow in the Clouds.
Noah, Flood, Replinish
…God spoke to Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
Behold! I, even I, establish My covenant with you, and with your seed after you; and with every living creature that is with you, of the birds, of the cattle, and of every animal of the earth with you; from all that go out from the ark, to every animal of the earth.
…I will establish My covenant with you.
Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood.
Neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
…God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature with you, for everlasting generations: I set my rainbow in the cloud. And it shall be a token of a covenant between Me and the earth.
And it shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud.
…I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
And the rainbow shall be in the cloud. … I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. …God said to Noah, This is the token of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
(Genesis 9:8-17, MKJV)
