Remembering and Forgetting: Moments with Meaning

How does our mind decide which of our past experiences to actually remember? Surely there is far too much mental baggage for us to be able to dig out from the basement of our brains all of the important moments of our life that have molded us into the people we are now. Even the most meaningful of conversations I’ve had with friends or substantive self-realizations will inevitably be forgotten one day. Or how about the major themes of books and films, moving artwork I’ve once dived into with open eyes and a curious heart? Fleeting, fleeting, fleeting, all of it appears to be fleeting. And I’ve only lived two decades… it seems pointless to try and imagine the value my memories will have when my years have aged to 60. Or are they harnessed in a cozy nest of subconsciousness that operates invisibly. If so, what is my relationship with this subconsciousness: does it control my thoughts and actions, or am I actively and continually reorganizing its possessions?

The reason this seems so important is because it can help us indicate how we construct meaning in our lives. What we truly value in the world today is shaped by our interaction with the thousands of yesterdays. However this interaction is constant and ever-flowing, and moments of change or enlightenment of any sort can be easily hidden in the mundane regularity of everyday patterned existence.

So how can we encourage moments of true value, ones that burst with orange oceans and rains of wisdom?

Everyday I wake up and believe that this day is the most important day in my life. However, one day in the future I will have forgotten everything that happens to me today, and it will consequently become insignificant to my life from a grand perspective.

I always forget that I won’t remember everything. Actually… every, single, day, I forget that I won’t remember everything.

Yet tomorrow I believe I will awake to skies full with scattered clouds of shapes I’ve never seen before. Life will once again begin again.