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.
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