How is it we can remember to forget?

“...Sometimes we can actually change the past. Because the only part of the past that  is still alive in the present. Is the story we tell our selves. About what the past means. When we change that meaning. We can change the past.” –Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D., M.B.A.,

 

This is a subject that has been on my mind for some time now.

I recently heard that we rewrite our personal history over and over based on whether we want to remember our history in a positive light or a negative one. How is this right? Can we at will rewrite history based on whether we’re feeling good or bad? Like someone or hate them? Yes we can, and we do it all the time. How is this fair to the others in our memories? Well it’s not fair, and it’s just that simple.

So many things play into how we choose to remember. Like how we’re feeling that day, good mood or a bad one, future grievances or perceived wrongs, a difference in perspective for example; two people can watch the same movie and have a totally different outcome. One may love it for the romance and the person right next to them may hate it for the violence. They will inevitably have a deferent personal perspective or history on the memory of that movie. Even worse let’s say they both love it as they leave the theater that night. Both laughing and reciting the funny lines that made them laugh. Then a week or so later one will remember that they didn’t really like the leading lady or the way she acted in one of the scenes. And now that they think about it they really didn’t even like the film or the theater.  Now that person may subconsciously or consciously rewrite how they felt about that whole evening. In so doing they will influence the history of that same time for those involved perhaps inviting them to reconsider their take on how they really felt, thus rewriting history. We all do it every day.

So it is with life, and this really bugs me. I would like it if everyone remembered my life and the things I or we have done the same as I do, but they don’t, nor should they. Whether it’s a difference of perspective or perhaps they have just chosen to rewrite history for a more convenient truth I don’t know. Maybe it’s all me and the desire as an eternal optimist to remember everything as the good ol days, seen through my rose color glasses. (Did you get that? I just admitted, I think??, That I like to rewrite my history in a positive light)

Now I’ll be the first to tell you that my stories may not be true, but they dang sure are the way I remember them. My childhood for example, we were poor Idaho farmers. We didn’t have money for a big screen TV or even a color TV we just had one 13” black and white TV with rabbit ears (ask your grandpa) and no remote that got 4 channels that’s all. Hardly ever anything good on, and if you watched it you did it as a family and watched what your dad wanted to watch. No computer, iPod or cell phone, as a matter of fact we were on a party line meaning that you shared you phone line with 3 or 4 other families and if they were on it talking, you couldn’t be. We didn’t have money or time for lessons or activities of any kind really, although in my youth I did take piano for a couple of years (Ms. Capp I Love You). We didn’t “hang out” with friends all the time although we did get a friend to come over from time to time. Time was spent mostly working on the 600 acre farm. It seems to me that work started most days on the farm at 5am except for Saturday which started earlier.  Dad would get Bryan and me up and we would go out to start the day. We would come back in for breakfast and sometimes cook it for the whole family. It was always big and you ate all you could kuz breakfast may be all you got till dinner that evening. Dad could be rough on Bryan and me from time to time too. Now some might say it was a bleak time or that we were held back, unfulfilled, and overworked. I could look at all I didn’t have or didn’t get and weep softly, but I will and do tell everyone it was the best childhood that anyone could have hoped for. You see once and a while the work would get done and there would be time for us to do whatever we wanted, well whatever we wanted, that you could do for free… on the farm… in the middle of nowhere… which is exactly what we did. I wish you could see the full, warm smile spread over my face as I tell the stories that and remember all the things we or I was able to dream up.

 I think the statute of limitations has gone by and there are no charges that can or need to be pressed.

 So I don’t mind telling you a few. Like the time I stayed home sick (I was faking) from school and set fire to the old log cabin outside our house. I thought it would be a good idea to fill the inside corner of the cabin with dry tumble weeds and set them on fire. They would burn up in one big whoosh, with flames licking and rolling around the roof and rafters and then just like that, nothing would be left but some red embers floating in the air. I repeated this for a while till my A.D.D. kicked in and then I was off to do whatever I wanted next. Apparently one of the red embers found a spot to smolder kuz several hours later dad and mom (who were working in a field far away) saw the gray column of smoke rising and they rushed back to the house to see what was burning, thinking it was the house of course. They saw it was the old log house and dad came in and got me by the nap of the neck. That is to say kicked my butt all the way out to the fire and handed me the garden hose to spray the fire. I will always remember the school bus driving by slowly with all the leaning out the windows pointing at the fire and me in my pajamas with one slipper on and a garden hose sprinkling the rubble of the old log house.

Another time when I was about 14, I faked sick, I decided to go hunting and I loaded up the 20 gauge shotgun and the 22 rifle and was about to head out to go rabbit hunting. I was sitting on mom and dad’s bed, as that’s the room where all the guns were kept. When I stood up to leave I accidently pulled the trigger on the 22 that I thought was empty and it went off. Sure I freaked out for a minute but when I calmed down I realized there was now a bullet hole over their bed in the ceiling. What to do? In a moment of shear brilliance I decided to put a Band-Aid over the hole.  Now for sure mom and dad would see this Band-Aid and of course they would naturally call me in for questioning first. But my plan was to coolly and calmly look at it and tell them how strange it is for them to have a Band-Aid on their ceiling. Knowing all along that they would never get a ladder to climb up and check it out only to find the bullet hole that would really get me in trouble. It worked flawlessly!!!!! I believe on the day we moved out that Band-Aid was still there. 

Or the time Bryan and I told Jolene (our younger sister) she could be in our club if she agreed to go through our initiation. It took place on this particular time in an old log cabin this is not the one I burned down. This one didn’t have a roof, just 4 log walls. We poured out a large circle of gas in the sandy dirt floor then sprinkled 22 shells into the gas ring and told her to stand in the middle, and then we lit it on fire. Sure it sounds bad now but then, to us it sounded like fun… well at least to Bryan and me. We didn’t make her stand there too long, she kept asking for permission to run out, (she was always so obedient) We told her to get out, after all we didn’t want to have to explain it to mom on the trip to the hospital. She ran out of the ring of death and the walled room and sometime after shells started going off. If you had asked us at the time”what were you thinking?” We would have said. “We’re thinking how surprising it was that it took so long for a shell soaked in gas to go off. However when Jolene found out that all we did in our cub was find more ways to torment our little sisters, strangely she didn’t want to be in our club anymore? Girls?? Go figure.

So why go on and on about this? My child that’s why! I overheard one of my children telling his grandma that it was a good thing that his mom and dad got a divorce because they were always so unhappy. How untrue could this possibly be!!!  Our life of almost 21 years together was by-and-large great, (until the end) I remember we spent a lot of time laughing. We had rough times but I always believed we could and would do better. This is how I remember it. We had photo albums full of happy faces so I can believe it is not just me tainting my memories with my rose colored glasses.
Now I could see how he may remember unhappiness as the kids didn’t know that my wife had asked for a divorce a long time before they knew about it, and we actually did divorce. So for the last three + years of our marriage she was trying to get rid of me and I was desperately trying to keep us together. However she had already found my replacement. So in the final days there was friction all the time.

My hope and prayer then is that as my kids look back they will hold onto the good and fun memories we did have, putting these first, and chose to remember with fondness the good rather than let the bad overcome and overwhelm, destroy and eventually forget altogether that which was good. Hence rewriting history from what it was into just what we remember.   
2012






 

Based on my thoughts after listing to a BYU Devotional;

David Paxman, Zoram and I,  2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwJSUgUmKcY