If Only

 If only we had selective memory.  In the song Horel California by the Eagles, they sing that some dance to remember and some dance to forget.  Everyone has memories they'd like to remember and memories they'd like to forget.  In psychotherapy, electroshock to the brain is to erase memory, so a person will forget, but that is never selective memory that is erased.

But every person has memories that are unique to that person.  This is why every person could write an autobiography and every book would be different.  Every person tells a story that is unique to that person.  This is why at the end of life every person wants to be remembered for the good they gave to the world.  

I suppose every person would dance to both remember and forget, which is the story of every life.  Very few who experienced war would like to remember.  But those who have happy memories of a long marriage want to remember.  My wife has been going through some fifty years of marriage, sorting through those photos.  We have a few that go back to previous generations of our families.  Those photos bring back memories we talk about to this day.

Younger generations are still creating photos, which is partly why social media becomes so important today because memories are created in real time.  And instead of being stored in albums and boxes as ours are, they are shared with the world.  It used to be that when a family went on a vacation, the father had a film camera and made sure he had plenty of roll film for slides so that when they got back, the father would return from the drug store with his developed slides.

Then when family and friends came over he'd get out the slide projector and set up the screen and shared his slide photos with each photo telling a story and the family sharing their experiences.  But over time, those slides would be thrown into a box making room for more slides and more stories.  That is how it used to be done.  

There are simply things we don't want to forget, but over time oir memories fade and our life experiences become simply snapshots in our minds.  Over time we forget both the bad and the good, but it seems only the best and the worst remain.  It just depends on which memories remain.  

My pipes have memories, but only a few of my pipes tell a story.  They are my favorites.  The rest have memory, but some are more vivid than others, with a few leaving me with no memory whatsoever.  Every item in a house tells a story.  Some stories are interesting while some items are just there and we have no idea how they got there.  But not true of the people in our lives.  Everyone has those they'd like to forget.  The others are still there.  Today I am s moking my Nording Number 3 with some Spiced Rum.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave