I can hear the rain lightly fall to the ground, tiny pitter patters in the parking lot below me. It reminds me of being a child, staring out our living room window wondering when it will stop or when I could go play in it. I can still see the gray of the sky and bold blades of green grass. My mother’s 1983 blue Volvo wagon in the driveway, the paint peeling off the windowsill outside.
I can see the fireplace and my father’s old brown leather recliner; I was standing there, looking out the window in the same spot we put the Christmas tree every year. I must have been fairly young; I do not remember my sister beside me. She must have been at school, and I was at home with my mother, my father at work.
I remember my sister and I having these baby blue plastic boats in the cupboard, we had got them from some banana splits at some point. I guess when she got home from school and the rain let up some we got to float them down the street in the gutter. Life was so huge back then, my imagination running wild with the craziest of hopes and dreams. I must have been 5 at the time.
Rainy days always have me pulling up memories for some reason, maybe it’s cause life slows down so much in the rain. I never know what I am going to grab hold of and how I will react to it. If I hoped for outcomes, I would hope all the tapes that are played are never held on to. Remembered and released, seen, felt, and let go of. It is the holding on to memories that gets me in the worst of ways, I would rather just watch them pass by like the rains that fall.
I think when we hold on to memories, we judge them and place a value on the experience. Yeah, there is looking back and wincing at the pain or feeling downtrodden or elated by what has transpired. But to reminisce in it, to say if it was good or bad only label’s and categorizes the experience. Labels tell us how to see and feel towards something, leaving us little room to see and feel it differently. Categorizing has us trapped with boxes of resentments for what was or binds us to the desire to have it again. “This experience belongs here, and I feel this way about it” we start compartmentalizing our lives instead of living them openly. We chain ourselves to misery not even knowing we are doing so; it all starts with attaching ourselves to judged experiences.
I still do it; I don’t know anyone that doesn’t. It’s difficult to take an experience, feel some way about it and then just let it go. What do we do when we have no feelings to feel? Nothing to romanticize or regret, nothing to be happy or sad about? Nothing to set us on fire and give life to life? We make shit up. We reach back to memories or start dictating how the future will be. We reminisce, we desire, we get on our hamster wheel of a brain and get to running.
The mind can be fickle and uncontrollable. Like a squirrel in the summer hiding nuts for the winter. The squirrel scrambles around all day long retrieving nuts and burring them throughout the forest. It knows nothing else; it lives in fear of not having enough to eat through the winter. The funny thing about squirrels, it’s that 80% of the nuts they hide, they forget where they hid them. That means the squirrel only lives off of 20% of what it’s hidden.
This is how our mind is. We’ve collected thousands of memories over the years, hundreds of thousands. Yet, the mind races around so fast that it only pulls up the ones we’ve the strongest feelings towards. The ones we’ve judged as good or bad, the ones we’ve categorized and stuffed into boxes. I need a memory to make me happy right now because I am feeling sad. I had my feelings hurt by so-and-so and it was just like when this person or that person did the same thing. This moment is amazing, it’s just like the time I experienced this, but that time lasted longer. This moment is horrible, it’s just like the time… on and on we go.
I wonder what life would be like if we didn’t fall back to memories. If we didn’t keep score on the joyful or painful experiences we’ve had. If we went through life with a touch and go mentality. Would we be more present to have a different feeling towards something instead of comparing it to what was, even if they are similar? Would we give ourselves an opportunity to grow, to stay present and feel it all the way through instead of cutting ourselves off by getting thrown back into something that is not now? Would the arguments between you and your significant other be different even if it revolved around the same issue? Would we be quicker to find an agreement if we weren’t holding on to what was?
Being fully present in each moment is not easy. Think about going to the fridge to get a glass of water. Think about how many actions are taken, all the steps to get from where you are now to where you are going and completing this task. So many actions and we do them all on autopilot. We don’t watch every step; we know where we are walking. We don’t feel the glass, I’ve picked up cups my entire life and I rarely feel what they are made of, I’m often not even conscious of the weight. Being present in every moment is not easy, our minds are constantly occupied by so many other things. But to practice non-attachment to experiences, this is much easier to get us present in the moment and not only that, but it will also give us more enjoyment and less pain.
When we can feel something, experience something and let it go, knowing we are not going to take it with us, we will be able to fully open our hearts to it. We will not fear losing a feeling, we will already know that it’s not going to last, and another will come back one day. When something terrible happens, we will be able to sit with it instead of running from it, knowing that we will not be taking it with us when the moment changes.
I am capable of doing this, but less so when it comes to sadness and pain. These times are so trying, so heart wrenching. The feeling of loss, the feeling of pain, at times I want to avoid it all cost. When it does enter my life, I unconsciously grasp at joyful memories I stored away. I hold fast to all of it, wanting to avoid the sadness, but I only increase it with the memories my mind has retrieved, and I don’t let go of any of it. It’s hard enough to come back around to now, let alone clinging to what was. And really, it starts with the label I put on it in that moment that has me feeling this way. I judge and categorize. I relate one moment to the other and get all wrapped up in what was which creates self-obsession and misery.
If I would only change my perception of how things are. If I was only able to constantly keep a conscious contact with the present moment. If I didn’t judge the experiences, if I only felt them and let go of them go, I would have more peace in my life. I mean that’s what we are all striving for right? Peace within our lives, equanimity? I think that starts with how we take in all our experiences. Whether you live in a tiny, dilapidated home or a gleaming mansion with gold toilets, they can both be palaces with your right view. Along with all we encounter in our lives, we don’t have to have good or bad experiences, we can just have experiences.
To think this all stared with the sound of the rain splashing in the parking lot below my window. The years my sister and I spent in that home were not always grate, I’m unable to remember much of it. I can recall some of the memories, some have made me smile, more have made me sad. I no longer cling to them today, they come into my mind, I see them and feel them and let them go with indifference. I choose to put more effort into being here now, with an open heart and clear mind to experience all that now has to offer.
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