By: Cia Huston Dreves
History, it is known, is being written with each rising and setting sun. Of world history, the history of nations and of man, both great and small, of companies and families; it is the history of each individual alone that is reflected upon and scrutinized without conscious thought.
It is within this constant, unique and seemingly insignificant reassessment of one’s past that the essence of man exists. The longings and dreams, the labors and strivings, the years, the moments, the thoughts provide the woof and warp in the tapestry of every life and the individual’s recollection of his personal history provides his definition of self as well as his opinion of others.
In youth, we view yesterday only in passing. In adolescence, we remember our childhoods but are focused on the present. As young adults, the past seems “ancient” history and the future a myopic blur. But as we age, the chosen fragmentations of the past have a tendency to surface, often rising to heights previously unimaginable, occasionally undeserved.
In time, the fragmentations become the measure of a man in his assessment of his life. They are but memories, carefully selected, painstakingly protected, nurtured and nourished providing sustenance in old age.
When eyes are dim and hearts are weak and shoulders bent to time, the mind lingers in the meadows of the past. Pity those in whose meadows lurk dark shadows, foes to yet be fought, bitter battles yet unwon, for the peace they lack was laid before them in the pages of their past and rejected for their more ominous view.
On a park bench, in a garden, moving slowly across a parking lot with gnarled fingers wrapped around a walker, occasionally one will see on the face of an elder, an inward smile, a sort of satisfaction radiating from heavy-lid laden eyes. The simple satisfactions of life are seldom measured in miles or leagues or accomplishments of consequence. They reside instead in magical, miniscule moments retrieved at will or catapulted into the present by an almost indefinable fragrance, a fragment of a melody or a simple sensation floating on a breeze.
It is said in colloquial terms that a person is what a person eats, but neither broccoli nor chocolate exist within the soul. But what a man remembers, that is the fact of his existence. It may not match the memories of those who walked beside him, but they are not him. They will not share in his final breath, and their memories are not his memories.
The memory of musty attic odors in a place where children played can be the source of satisfaction to one who giggled there and the seed of deep resentment to one who was turned away. While the same self feted fragrance for the child who sought refuge, there can evoke a sense of safety as easily as ref lections of violence and fear. The difference was in the choosing, the seemingly insignificant daily reassessment of the pieces of our past.
Blessed is he whose life is filled with love and laughter but even more the one who skews his view to elevate the lovely and reduce to naught the somber sufferings of life. In such a person, age fulfills life’s longings, and short is the distance to serenity and peace. The warmth of the sun on a chilly winter morning, the sound of a distant dove, a train whistle barely speaking through the fog, autumn leaves swirling on a breeze, the taste of salt as one approaches the ocean, the stillness of softly falling snow, children laughing as some silly game is played, the cinnamon smells of baking apple pie—all of these are avenues to our remembering. They are the keys to each and every past. They are the sparks that ignite the fires of memory, in which we hold the treasures of our lives.
Cia Dreves is the author of the How-To book Find Cash in Your Kitchen and maintains the blog, StillFindingCash.blogspot.com