We all have memories, some that are fairly accurate and
others that are a little more remotely removed from
the truth. Memory is such a tricky thing in that there is
no way to tell beforehand which person or occurrence
will be recorded by our mind and which will not. You
may remember vividly the first time you saw your partner for life, or
met someone who had nothing whatsoever to do with your life but was
important to you, such as an entertainer or famous sports figure. However,
the odds are that your friends will know as you speak about the moment
over the years, as they refrain from telling you, “Yes, we have heard about
the time you met Frank Sinatra.” These are our personal memories of
our own life, and they matter little in the grand scheme of things. What
really matters are the memories others have of us. Although you may
quickly forget helping a friend at a time of need, it will probably never be
forgotten by that individual. Every day, we create new memories, some
for ourselves and some for others. It is those memories that we create in
others that our lives will be measured by and not our own. Think of the
classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. Poor “George” had
no idea of the impact he made upon others’ lives, as he went about what
he deemed to be an uneventful existence.
Isn’t it odd that those people we know the least are ourselves. We may
remember particular events, but rarely do we remember entire chunks of
time; and our viewpoint is almost always an “I” witness account of what
occurred. Some of us even seem to have the unique ability to remember
things, whether they really happened or not.
I often comment that people should remember that history is written
by the winners. Along with that, most of us tend to remember things we
have won and not what has been lost. For some, that is a high
school football game; for others it is a Nobel Prize. However, it is rare for
us to be able to focus on something we said to someone who needed a
helping hand, although that may well be that moment that they
cherish and will always remember.
Fortunately, our memories can be stimulated by a photograph, a smell,
or even by hearing someone else speak about their memory of the event,
even though their memory of it is usually different from our own, as in the
film Gigi when Maurice Chevalier sang “I Remember It Well.” Memories are
the library of our mind, a diary that we carry about with us, as we recall
things, not as they were, but as we think they were or would like them to
have been. There are, of course, some who spend their entire life trying
to overcome a prior moment in their life that seems to have changed it
forever. That is never the case, except in their own minds. Many
of us have fallen often, but do not allow our memory of that occasion
to stop us from bouncing back up. Never let memories hinder who you
are; but, instead, use your powers of recall to help you move on and
prosper, rather than drawing you down like quicksand. When I count
my blessings, I never run out of pleasant memories, and I hope you won’t
either. Most of all I try to remember that what I did for myself will soon
be forgotten, but what I did for others will be remembered long after
I’m gone.
I’m not myself today and everybody has noticed the improvement 55