Anyway, as I was taking a break, the HUD sign that came off the house we owned north of the Drake area caught my attention. This was doubly fascinating as I had been past that house a week or so ago and saw that it was for sale. I actually called the agent and discovered that the house had sold very quickly. The agent had been fascinated to know that I had once been an owner and wanted to talk about its history. For any of you that remember us living there, I'm including a link to the Zillow page so you can look through the pictures of the house now, as opposed to the memories you may have of it. As you will see, the current owner is much more in favor of carpet than I have ever been, always preferring hard surfaces, given the choice. Also, they redid the kitchen again, and it all looks very nice. If you remember it when I lived there, check it out here.
As I was wandering this strange set of memories, all triggered simply by the sign that had been in front of the house when we bought it, I started to think about memories in a more global way. As I begin to get older, read as "older," not old, memories are very interesting. In many cases, I have much better memories of the things I did as a child than the things I did last week. Fortunately, items like pictures and old bits of paper and souvenirs help me remember some things. On the other hand, there are parts of my life that are really just a blank. I find this troubling.
At this point, I thought about an article by Hugh Howey that I read last week. It was sent to me by a friend who tries to make sure I read things that keep me thinking. For your consideration, here is a link to the article. I would really recommend this as something to read and consider. In the article, he writes about going to the beach and how long it took to get there when he was a child vs. the amount of time that it took when he was in high school. I don't know about you, but that makes a lot of sense. I remember it seemed like forever between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next. I can remember spending an entire day one summer lying in a hay field watching the clouds go by. If I could know the truth, it was probably 15 minutes, but looking back, it seemed like a whole day. I was still making new memories in those days.
I had the opportunity to talk with my son and his wife over the weekend with this on my mind. I asked if they remembered anything about last Monday. Andrew told me that he had gone to work, but that was all that he could actually remember. In the conversation, they have clearly hit the part of life that is "wash and repeat." They are going through the steps, accomplishing the things that they need to get done, but honestly it is like those times when you finish a car trip and cannot remember parts of the trip. They are functioning just fine and doing all of the right things, but they are no longer making new memories. Their mind is just moving them forward. And this, if you wondered, is why people always tell you that time goes faster as you get older. Relatively, I think that it does. We are no longer making new memories - we are living in what we know.
I have to ask myself what I am going to do with all of this. I think that I will always agonize a little over the years I didn't do enough living every day, but over and above all of that, I think that I am going to spend a lot more time thinking about all of the individual opportunities that present themselves in a day. And with each of those, I am going to work more diligently to say "YES" to as many as possible and start making new and different memories. I have no idea if I will make any difference at all, but it sure seems to me to at least be worth a try.
Give it some thought and see if you are willing to try too. Yes?
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