They Are More Beautiful If They Are Few

In my last post, I wrote about collecting more and more photos and memories during the months leading to our eldest leaving home for university and during a trip to Quebec for his last March Break. 

Luckily, we managed to have another family trip that summer driving along Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. I tried to remember every detail of this "last" trip together. I collected rocks from every beach we went to. I took photos of the rocks and separated them so that I could remember wich ones were from where. 

The rocks remind me of a special time. One of my favourite photos is the photo I took of my husband taking a photo of our kids skipping rock. Of course, his photo is a better photograph, but I love the moment that I captured.

The rocks were a memento of our time on the beach but not every beach we stopped at was special on this day. The one that 'took our breath away' in relation to the rocks was Big Bay; "The Stone Skipping capital of Canada.

But like I would later read,

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few. " Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Or in my case that day, one cannot collect all the beautiful rocks on the beach.

I would also add that although a few are beautiful, the collection as a whole on the beach are most beautiful.

I still haven't done anything with my rock collection. They are in a beautiful box but not being enjoyed or remembered.

Before learning this recent lesson, I continued to collect more and more memories. I took lots of photos and collected more and more mementos.

Last year, I started the Revive55 Project with the goal of preserving all these moments I had been collecting. How could I better remember and enjoy all these memories? During my project though, I read this shell quote and took an uncluttering course which changed my opinion.

While writing about collecting shells in Gift From The Sea, Anne Morrow Lindberg reflects:

"I couldn't even walk head up looking out to sea, for fear of missing something precious at my feet. The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize."

"In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty." 

"For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms."

I may not need a box full of rocks to remember this holiday, but one (or a few) special ones from this beach. 

Even our kids were looking at their feet and found precious rocks, like this heart-shaped one because they know I love hearts. This rock "framed in space" in my daughter's hands is the most special.

As beautiful as the lake or the sky is, I do have to admit that the rocks are the precious part of this beach.

Although I have read this idea of less is more in various places, and appreciate its message; I still struggle with getting rid of things. During my Revive55 Project, I did select the most precious from some of my possessions. I have gotten rid of some of the least special but there is still more decluttering and deleting to be done.

To help, I have accepted that I need an 'in-between' phase. I am putting more in storage to see what I miss and want to better appreciate and what I am ready to let go of, even if I still like them. That's the challenge with decluttering mementos. We kept them because they mattered but as the years and moments accumulate, our space isn't big enough to keep the growing collection. Perhaps as time passes, our memory of the item will diminish so it will be easier to let go.

As I see my precious keepsakes surrounded by space rather than cluttered with others, it gives me more motivation to continue to make more space.

Memories Bliss Point

When my eldest was in his last year of high school, it hit me. It was New Year's Eve and I looked at the New Year, not with my usual excitement and hope for the future but the beginning of the end.  This was the year when our family of 4 living together would end.

Was this our last New Year's Eve celebration together?

I wished I could stop time, but I couldn't, so I wiped away the tears and enjoyed what could have been our last New Year's celebration, but luckily there would be more.

With the end in sight, we went on a road trip to Quebec City, Mont Trembland and Montreal for the last March Break. I cherished this trip and wondered if it would be our last family trip. I continued collecting more and more mementos and taking more and more photos. Fast forward a few years and a few more "last" family trips and as the collection grew, it became more overwhelming to organize it all. 

I have been researching memories and nostalgia, to better understand why we remember some things and not others. I began the Revive55 Project in order to preserve my memories and hopefully remember more but are more memories better? Is there a bliss point when it comes to memories? What is the perfect balance of enough memories so that they are optimally enjoyed but not too many so that they are lost in the clutter?

Each one of us has our own bliss point. For some of us, experiencing the moment is our bliss point; for others taking photos and enjoying them is what we love. While others want to document the stories by writing or recording them.

In my last post "Time is the Most Unforgiving of Fires"  I wrote: 

We remember our memories better when we relive them. 

We can remember them in our mind, look at our photos and/or read the stories we have written. We can prevent our memories from fading with time by reliving them.

Time is the Most Unforgiving of Fires

I wrote a blog post in 2008 after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. You can read that original post by clicking here.

It was inspired by a quote in the book:

(to give some perspective, the passage describes how Laila feels after her first love Tarik tells her that he and his family are moving away)

"In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could—a look, a whisper, a moan—to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn’t, in the end, save it all. "

I think that the author really describes it perfectly: "like an art lover running out of a burning museum"; "time is the most unforgiving of fires".

It's interesting to reflect on how I felt over a decade ago:

"Memories: something very close to my heart. I have realized that so many of my memories are forgotten. Perhaps that is why I take so many photos, to help me remember. I sometimes think that I’m too busy taking photos rather than really experiencing the moments so I have tried to curtail my photo-taking."

Interestingly, a month after that post, we bought a Digital SLR and our photo-taking increased exponentially. A couple of years later, I would get my first iPhone and then I had a camera with me wherever I went.

In one way, I love that so much of my life was documented with photographs, but like I would reflect then I didn't keep up with the journaling in photo albums.

"I am often told that I have such a good memory about my kids... but I kept a great journal during those times (and journaled in my photo albums). When I look through my photo albums from my childhood and university years (when I didn’t [journal]), I’m amazed how much I forgot."

With the increase in digital photos, I stopped printing photos and putting them in albums for many years. The great thing though is that although I may have been in the minority who was journaling in albums 10-20 years ago, most of us have been "journaling" in the last decade by posting on social media.

We have preserved many memories on Facebook so why not enjoy them? As the quote says, "time is the most unforgiving of fires". I sometimes see old posts and think "I had forgotten that!" By seeing the post, we are reminded of these moments that were important enough to share at the time.

Sometimes you will receive notifications from Facebook of memories from this day, but you can see them yourself every day by going to Facebook.com/memories when you are signed in to your account.

TimeHop is an app that you can connect to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to see your posts from on this day. You can also link your photos so every day you can go to this app to see your memories from "on this day".

If you want to see memories from a day other than today, you can quickly go to a specific month and year on Facebook. When you're on your profile page, go to your activity log. Click on filter to choose your posts (rather than all activity) then choose the year and date.

While making my photobooks, I take screen captures of my posts or copy/paste the words to add journaling to my pages. You can also make photobooks on your phone from Facebook posts if you prefer to look through your memories in a book.

We remember our memories better when we relive them. 

A photo is not always worth a thousand words. We can ensure our memories don't fade by adding journaling to our photos to remind us of details that aren't obvious from the photo.

One last point, do you have your photos ready to be rescued in case of disaster whether that is a burning house, flood or technical crash of your computer or phone? As great as it is to have memories saved on Facebook, understand that the quality of the photos is diminished and you don't know how long that website will exist.

Write To Taste Life Twice

On August 6th, I received an email from the Team of the Day One app with the following quote that really resonated with me and my Revive55 Project:

"We write to taste life twice, 

in the moment and in retrospect."

Anaïs Nin

I loved the quote and copied it for this blog post. The post was going to be about writing our stories but a few days later, I picked up a book writeen with daily entries that I hadn't opened in a while - Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I often find that I read something in it that is perfect for when I read it and I hoped that this trend would continue. 

I started by re-reading the entry I had read the last time I opened it:

"A wise woman once advised me not to be a 'would-be-if-I-could-be or a could-be-if-I-would be. 

Just be.' And while I have learned that dreams need doing as much as they need being,

 I have learned that the being always comes first."

This reminded me of what one of my friends said during our weekly progress meeting two days earlier:

"It's not a to do life, it's a to be life."

I stopped re-reading the post at that quote - being amazed at the coincidence and had to write an email update to our group. 

But as I continued reading the entry in the book to quote in the email, it said:

"Today is a day for being. Be with those you love, be kind to yourself. 

Be quiet and call forth the dream you buried long ago. 

The ember is still glowing in your soul. 

See it in your mind, hold it tenderly in your heart. 

"The dream was always running ahead of one," 

Anaïs Nin confessed. 

"To catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, 

that was the miracle."

Another coincidence I told them in the email, reminding them of the quote from the Day One email I had told them during our group call.

I had never "noticed"Anaïs Nai before although I had obviously read this passage before and now I was noticing her twice in one week.

I ended the email saying that I always look at these coincidences as me being on the right track encouraging me to keep going.

Fast forward to today (a week and a half later). To help in writing this post, I searched through my email for the message I sent to my group by searching for "Anaïs". Along with the email I was looking for (and the Day One email), I found one that my sister sent to a group in 2010 to let us know that she had arrived in Paris. A friend of hers replied and this was one of the two signature quotes at the bottom of her email:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud 

was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -Anais Nin

This quote was so perfect for today. 

Writing about these small coincidences (and bigger moments) allows me to "taste life twice" and to connect the dots to see how one moment flows into another. 

The first quote is perfect for the Day One App. I love the app to capture memories in words, photos and other media. It's a great app to relive memories and "taste life twice".

Undocumented Stories

I wrote a blog post on my personal blog My Life Is Like A Song about Black Lives Matter where I share what has resonated with me on the topic. You can read my full blog post by clicking here.

I shared an article that I saw on the CBC website about the University of Western Ontario professor Philippe Rushton that reminded me of my university days.

"Rushton was a psychology professor [whose] work was widely criticized as racist as he attempted to draw conclusions between race and intelligence, fuelling beliefs that white people were genetically superior to Black people."  Click here to read the full article.

Our student newspaper at the University of Waterloo asked a question every week and printed the answers they received. I remembered being asked about Rushton's research and searched online to find this newspaper clipping.

Here's my (zoomed in) response:

Do you have memories with no documentation? 

During my Revive55 Project, I went through my memory boxes. I found a different "Campus Question" newspaper clipping that I was in and remembered this one as well, but I didn't have a clipping for this one. Reflecting back, what are the chances that I was featured in two "Campus Questions"? Hanging out at the Campus Centre where the newspaper office was probably helped.

This controversy with the university professor's research may be especially memorable to me because I was doing research in the Chemical Engineering Department so I was very interested in the methodology that this professor was presenting for his findings. When the reporter asked me if I wanted to share my thoughts on it, I wasn't shy to share my opinion.

Which brings me back to the idea of our memories. I was telling my daughter my memory of the campus question but did wonder, 'am I remembering this right?' 'am I embellishing it?'

When we don't have documentation for moments in our lives, we have a few options.

In this case, I was lucky to find the newspaper clipping online. Our university newspapers have been scanned. Last year, I went through many of them, trying to find this clipping.  Although I didn't find it at the time, I found other meaningful moments from concerts or other events that I was happy to be reminded of.

Telling stories helps us remember. I have often told the story of the days when I started dating my husband so we remember some of the details, but we don't have photos or specific mementos. We luckily have a photo of us from around that time period - we think before we were actually dating. But without cell phones, many of these earlier moments are not photographed.

I am taking a course called Tiny Story Society. This month's challenge was to photograph a story that isn't documented. We were asked to first document the story from memory to tell or write the story the way we remember it.

This week I was driving my daughter to Waterloo where I met my husband, so I took the time to go on campus and photograph the place where we watched a movie the night before our first official date. COVID-19 days made for an unusual photo with an empty hall that would normally be full of students lounging in chairs, walking or standing around.

I also went to the bar where I first saw him and we went for our first date.

Memories of lining up on this ramp, and watching people leave are so memorable.

Although this venue is no longer a bar, it was the venue for the open house our daughter attended while trying to decide on her university choice. My husband took a photo that day as we remembered the stage I was sitting on when I first saw him; the DJ booth where we'd make song requests and the dance floor where we spent hours enjoying our favourite songs.

Sometimes, actually going to the place isn't possible but there are other ways to bring those memories back to life.

What story do you want to capture?