Reverb Day 6: Memories and Precious Things

tyunglebower ♦ December 6, 2013 ♦ 1 Comment

What precious things have you gathered in 2013? Which memories from this year do you wish to keep with you always?

I’ve come to believe in recent years that we don’t often know that something may be a precious thing, or a memory we wish to hold on to forever while we are still in the midst of it happening. Sometimes we may not even know for quite a while after the fact that something qualifies as such.

Some things do obviously fall into this category. Any time I spend with my youngest niece, naturally. She is two and a half years old, and comes with all of the craziness of that age. Not at all difficult to consider things such as that as “precious”. In fact, time with family in general is probably a fair entry into that collection of memories one wishes to keep with one always. Fair enough.

But what of other things? The things around which one’s entire life does not revolve, but nonetheless become woven into each person’s spiritual tapestry? It is these things that don’t always announce themselves as precious memories.

For example, I have met several new people this year. Could one or more of them end up being significant in my life for any number of reasons? Certainly. And if they do, the moment I met them would become retroactively precious, in a sense. Or the feelings I have had upon completing any given one of my writing projects. Will those projects be the means by which I touch lives? If so, I should imagine I’d want to hold on to the memory of conceiving and completing such works.

Or, none of those things could end up significant, and will present nothing precious to me, no matter how long after the fact I consider them.

That being said, I do not recall any things that happened in 2013 that I would at this moment consider precious on this level. Though the future may reveal them as such.

In the end, I suppose there is a lesson even in my ambiguous relationship with my moments of 2013; one must, (or at least I must) make room in my heart for any event, any moment, any person, any experience to be precious, and worthy of my recollection forever. Or I must be willing, like a miner, to dig through the mountains of dirt that make up the tedium of daily life so as to seek out the sparkling precious gems or the memorable and significant moments. For though the precious in life will for some people at some times present itself, for the rest of us we probably have to be astute observers for most of our days to detect same.