How do you deal with memories? Do you embrace them or turn them away?

They are part of package.
And it isn’t a matter of going back. If we could go back, there would probably be plenty of places we would all go.
Without memories, good or bad, you might as well be a bean plant.

If I was you I would keep them safe somewhere like a treasure, unless they were from someone I had bad experience with, but that’s just me who value memories. I have tons of objects from the past even computer files and though I never use some of them, they are all part of my memories. Sometimes when I randomly find something that reminds me of my memories, it always brings a smile in my face.

That’s why I find it hard to remove things. I don’t want to lose things that remind me of good memories. If they were bad memories they would have been removed a long time ago.

Memories are memories and good or bad they all have a place along the road I have traveled. Good memories are easy to come by and not so fun memories are impossible to scrub from our minds and are reminders we occasionally bump into. I am not proud of some of the mistakes I made along the way but my life has been enriched from the experience. No regrets just a nagging desire to fix a few things.

I just experience them but there is nothing I am overly emotionally attached to. The only thing that make me a little sentimental is thinking about my daughter when she was little sometimes. I am not a collector and keeper of sentimental cards, trinkets, ticket stubs, etc. I don’t like clutter.

I’ve got some letters that were sent to me 40/50 years ago. I’m making arrangements to get one set of them to family of the young man who sent them to me. He died very young and his sisters think his children would enjoy reading the letters. They contain stories he will never be able to tell them himself (and he was already leading a very interesting life when he was in his teens).

I’ve been entertained re-reading some of them. Some were mundane – requests to have me send “we’re an american band” to him when his parents were posted in Paris – others were more interesting.—he was in the social circle around this young man at the time, and wrote about what was happening in their circle.

I’m glad I hung onto the letters through many moves and storage craziness.

They just are. I don’t do anything with them. Sometimes good or bad memories come to mind and I process them and move on. I don’t think you can divorce yourself from your memories. You can get rid of mementos (as you have with your old letters) that might trigger unpleasant memories, but the memories will still be there, just under the surface.

Embrace.

I have this really bad(?) habit of choosing to look at people who have caused me pain with anger. Anger’s easier to feel than sadness. So I find some way to justify past pain where I can feel like I was a victim and then I don’t have to feel guilty or sad.

There are some past situations that even in hindsight I can’t see objectively through my protective rage cacoon.

Situations that don’t paint me in a bad light I can embrace.

Funny how that works, ain’t it.

I have some very happy memories I like revisiting time and again, people and places and events and some not so happy. I revisit them too but not so often. Memories, memories without them what would we be?

I now have that bloody Streisand song stuck in my head, cheers for that :(

I save them all)) All the postcards and letters I have ever recieved, all the gifts I was presented. I like to look through all of them sometimes. It’s so pleasant to revisiting your past.

This quote from Chris Ware pretty much sums it up for me:

“Most cartoonists are endemically nostalgic people who turn our lives over and over and over again trying to figure out how we went wrong, to fix things, control them, or make sense of things.”

I celebrate them. I have many memories of family, friends, adventures, travels, and many other experiences.

For a long time I had a tendency to bury or try to forget the unpleasant memories; but as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize those unpleasant experiences, added to the more pleasant ones, have shaped me into the person I am today.

Though it seems logical that I would embrace happy memories and bury sad ones, it’s sometimes the other way around depending on the size and significance of the event in my life.

Some days I’m ok with them. Other days I am not.

One thing I have found as I have gotten older is that I am getting more and more ok with bad memories. Progress I think.