Hello,
This morning I was thinking about time and how it seems to be elastic, extending or contracting depending upon our emotional state, our longing for something to happen, our level of concentration or boredom. I was also thinking about how time enhances or distorts our memories, and how we often feel sure of a sequence of events, let’s say, and yet what we really have in certainty is only the impression that the actual facts left on our hearts and minds. And how two people will remember the same incident totally differently depending upon our point of view, our emotional state and what we really want to remember. How sometimes we amalgamate two or more memories , actually distant in time, and yet grouped together in our consciousness as simultaneous or sequential. Often when people give me their history as they remember it, I feel that it doesn’t matter at all exactly how things happened, what’s most important is what they remember to have happened and how those events are stored and the emotions embedded within them.
A little while ago I was writing about things that lift our spirits and thinking of places I have lived and cherished memories of being outdoors, walking with my dogs, tending my goats as a child, picking flowers, paddling in streams in my wellington boots; pottering about on the Cooper River in South Carolina, wandering in the African bush; spending romantic evenings, being on a ferry in Northumberland on a fully moonlit night. And it interests me that almost all of these memories that came flooding in are times of chosen solitude – even as a child. Choosing to share the experiences maybe with my dogs but not with people – reserving my joy to share only with the Divine. Strange. I can very easily tap into a whole host of beautiful memories with people too of course, but those memories are different. I think that perhaps I’ve always needed solitude to meditate and converse with the Divine and it’s there that I feel my spirit soar most, and also where it feels as though time just stood still for long periods and extended into beautiful nurturing, warm, comforting tracts of pleasure with me being all alone but never lonely.
I’m just thinking about taking precious time to process (me, myself and the Divine again I’m afraid!) Often life is so busy that if we’re not careful some of the wonderful things that happen in our lives get filed immediately, but without us tasting them, savouring them, really understanding their significance and truly benefitting from them. Processing is what I sometimes refer to as sucking all of the juice out of life. When I sit at the end of the day and process all the blessings, and things that I haven’t yet been able to see as blessings, sort them out, find how they add to what I already have filed and smile at the wonder of it all, I feel filled with gratitude and often have a little chuckle with the Divine about what I didn’t really appreciate at the time because I was busy and going too fast to register everything and give it its due attention. That processing time is always expanded time for me. It doesn’t actually take long in ‘real’ time, and yet I can travel all through my more than 70 years of life, picking up memories from childhood along with memories of yesterday or today, making connections, wondering about when I’ll get the next piece of a puzzle… I find love deepening, curiosity also, and I feel enlivened and thrilled by this journey through ‘time’.
Enjoy today and when you process it, enjoy that too and your memories…
Much love
Brenda