In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness.
Sarah Orne Jewett
Until we learn the lessons inherent in unpleasant experiences, they will continue to hold power over us, and we will feel compelled to repeat them.
Taro Gold
Sometimes we travel back in time to our recent and then distant memories, in a cascading series of recollections that seem to follow one after the other. Mostly they lead us to some place in the far reaches of our pasts and then disappear as quickly as we arrived there. And perhaps mercifully so. That is one of hallmarks of most of our memories. They seem fixed and long term, but once there, in that part of the past they conjure up and revive, the memories once again dissolve in mist and become like dreams. They are real, or were, but how altered are they after each visit?
In these realms of memory are contained the person we only vaguely remember from a few years ago to decades in the past.
We try to visualize, when relaxing or dozing, the pleasant times and good memories we want to hold onto: endless summer days at the beach when we were young; cool brisk winds before a storm in summer when we are sitting out on the porch; gentle, soothing words in moments of crisis or fear from a loved one; carefree days of childhood; the times we spent with our best friends.
Our visits to the land of memory also take us to the bad times we endured, and there we may languish for long moments, trying to fathom the awfulness and meaning of it all. Why do we do this? Sometimes we obtain glimmers of understanding and truth from revisiting those times of trial and peril, just as the good memories offer the truths of better times for our understanding. We learn from both realms of memory: the sweet and joyful memories and those that are unalterably bad and fixed in our subconscious just as securely and retrievably. The bad memories are still there, just as the good memories remain. How and why we choose to remember them are crucial.
In what mental landscape of the past we choose to dwell most often lies a key to our future happiness. In the lowest moments, when memories of depression and failure loom up to confront us with their truths, we can let them linger longer than is beneficial and succomb to pain and regret. Or, we can see the failures as inescapable byproducts of decisions we have made which brought us pain and suffering. Then we can take that fact, that reality, and see that there is no changing the past, just learning from it.
And now I often ask myself whether I actually had any choice when I made those decisions, good or bad, because everything I was and had done up to that point was encoded in my very being to make that decision — every past event, action, thought and memory.
I try to look at the dark times and see the end of the tunnel where the light has led me, and then away from the painful past, never to return except in memory to remind me where I have been and how to avoid going there again. Or in old age, relief and comfort that I will never have to make those kinds of past decisions that resulted in so much anguish and depression. In that way, I can find, paradoxically, the contentment has eluded me, waiting for me to discover it.
Just as a long, cold and gray winter ends at last, so the season of spring comes again with its puffy clouds and blue skies, and the awakening of life all around.
In that remote place deep within myself, I can choose to find what makes me happy, and let it not be a secret, but something to share each day with others.
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