Managing and storing memories

It all started with just another day of skiing and led to another enlightening chairlift conversation with a sixty-something acquaintance of mine who kept going over his not-so-distant past amidst a litany of “shoulda, coulda, woulda.” He was in particular reminiscing the “good-old-days” when he owned and ran a large business with several facilities and some 65 employees working for him. He also complained incessantly about all the opportunities that somehow had eluded him along the way. I told him that he would do himself a great favor by storing all of his memories into a virtual “refrigerator” to preserve them well; he could review them at will, but never place them “front-and-center” as if they were staring into his face at all times on the windshield of his life. I also said that in that space, there should only be place for good, positive and uplifting memories. Bad, scary and negative ones should be treated like yogurts that have passed their expiration date; they owed to be discarded and never have a place in that special cool box. This doesn’t mean that we should not acknowledge unhappy memories when they occur; we certainly have a right and a duty to mourn our losses and regret our errors, but we should weave them into the canvass of our wisdom and our experience, and once this is done, we should let go of them. Beside, lets’ face it, the fridge is small and there’s barely enough room inside for all the great memories we’re intent on keeping!