I’ve been reliving a lot of memories lately. Some lovely, some difficult or painful. The lovely ones bring a smile to my face and joy in my heart – the warmth of love, success, people– Gifts of love and happiness. Whereas, when harsh memories start flowing and I try to understand or learn from mistakes or painful periods in my life, I find the hard ones create discord, chaos, stress and sorrow in me. They are detrimental to my health and happiness.
In bringing up these “rotten” (or rotting) pieces of my life, I recognize that I was sometimes the victim and sometimes the perpetrator – sometimes both at the same time – no matter how hard I may have tried to be the best person I could be. Sometimes I had no choice and other times I did – or I thought I did or didn’t. Some were choices I made or consequences from those choices, and others were not situations I created, but that I had to live through anyway, and in some of these situations I became the “fall guy” or scapegoat. I expect all of us do at some point in our lives – live through things we didn’t cause. Hopefully, we helped it become something better.
[Definition break: “scapegoat: a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.” (Origin: mid-16th century: from archaic scape ‘escape’ + goat.) Interestingly, there was a second definition that came from the Bible (I expect that’s where the “goat” came from): “a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16).” Although if we’re going to go to the Bible, I prefer the 1 Peter 4:8 passage with no goats: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” NIV]
Most of the time, I try to get through memories I need to process, but try not to linger on them – because they’ll only hurt or discourage me more as I dwell on them, and they only go away if I tell them “GO AWAY! FOREVER!” (about a million times). The past is done, I must move on, I must choose to remember the wonderful good that has happened or that I have done and hope that it “covers over” that multitude of “sins” or “wrong-doing” I have done in my state of being a flawed human being. Because that’s what we are: humans, flawed, not perfect, sometimes stressed or upset or exhausted. Sometimes I healed, helped or saved and other times I faltered, hurt, or discouraged… We all mess up no matter how hard we try to be perfect in a world where we can never be perfect. It isn’t possible. Why cling to memories we cannot change?
Let’s own our past and move on from it – forever – forgetting what is behind and moving forward. Let’s lay all our negative memories/deeds/attacks – innocent or perpetrator – onto symbolic goats and send them into the wilderness. Let’s choose to live in the good bits. It will make us happier people, so we can go forward and be better able to handle today with peace and calmness and good attitudes. Let’s accept ourselves right now as who we are, move forward into who we can be, and not concern ourselves with who we were. Be. Today. In the present. We’ll be better equipped against creating more bad memories to mull over and be depressed by. Choose wisely; choose joy.
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