This is one of my favorite quotes. It was written by the Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli.
When we are young, we live in the future and a little bit of the present. Growing up, we try to live in the present and a little bit of the future. As we get older, each day more and more of our consciousness is occupied by memories of the past..
There are some things that are impossible to forget. And our memories get stronger every time we go back to them. So memories, for some people, especially the highly sensitive and susceptible, are the strongest drug of all. Like for Hugh Jackman's character in Reminiscence, who the more he immersed himself in memories, the less he matched reality..
"The past haunts us," "the past catches up with us," is what we usually say. But the past doesn't care about us, we don't exist for it. It is we who pursue the past, unconsciously clinging to elusive memories. We pursue it in order to see our dear ones again, to see what we didn't see in them then.."
Millions of memories live in my head. All it takes is a slight whiff of subconsciousness, and they suddenly, anytime, anywhere, flash into my mind in an unexpected fragment from the past, a chaotic kaleidoscope of vivid pictures and images. Either filling my soul with a pleasant warm light, or making my heart shrink, cringe as if from a fierce frost..
The memory of places is especially strong. As soon as I find myself in a place where something happened to me in the past, my memory immediately brings me back to that situation, and I experience with almost the same intensity everything that I experienced then..
Sometimes when I think about my past, I feel sad and regret that it's gone and will never happen again. But when I imagine that it did happen in my life and it might not have, my heart fills with joy and gratitude.
Can we change the past? I think, in part, we can change our whole life, or any episode of it, just by changing our attitude toward it. As William Faulkner said, "The past is not dead. It's not even the past."
There is always something better than what you think. You can take any difficult or negative fragment of our lives and find in it something right, positive, edifying. Everything happens for a reason.
And if we often worry about what we've done in the past, blaming ourselves for wrong behavior, thinking we could have done things differently - we only lose the joy and value of the current moment in our lives.
Everything has its time. And everything passes. But there is something that belongs only to you and will remain with you forever. These are your memories.
When our lives become familiar and monotonous, and the number of vivid events and experiences inexorably reduces to banal existence, it is memories that fill our imagination, giving meaning and value to our lives. As Viktor Frankl remarked, "Having the past, life forever has meaning."
Our life is not measured in years, but in events and experiences. Not by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away.
Did something happen to you today that you will remember for the rest of your life?
It doesn't have to be extraordinary or unbelievable, perhaps small, quite ordinary events and experiences-but perceived with a new, deepest level of engagement and awareness. After all, memory doesn't store what you don't notice.
Let us live each day in a new way - as strongly and deeply as possible, not being afraid of new situations, unexpected actions, unknown experiences, gathering as many memorable moments as possible into our rich collection of life)..
