Do you ever have odd memories pop up from out of nowhere…moments that you can barely believe your mind has held onto for so many years?
I have a memory of being four years old, sitting in my father’s office in one of his oversized leather chairs with the metal studs running along the side and thinking to myself “I can’t wait until I am sixteen years old.” I can remember imagining vividly what it would be like to be sixteen…getting behind the wheel of a red sports car with my blonde hair waving in the wind (my hair would magically change to blonde when I was sixteen, obviously). Sixteen was the age that many of my Disney heroines met the love of their life, so that would happen to me, too.
Why was I sitting there thinking that? Why has my mind held onto this, and let go of so many other memories along the way?
I wonder if part of the reason for my selective memory has to do with my tendency of envisioning milestones within my life. That is my first memory of looking forward to a particular milestone. The age sixteen would usher in a golden age of abandonment to life and love. I would be beautiful and desirable and achieve my life’s purposes. Sixteen seemed so mature and so very very far away.
Of course, my sixteenth birthday came and went, and was very different than what I had imagined. Rather than climbing behind the wheel of a little red sports car, I forewent the drivers license altogether for an entire year, and even then had to share partial custody of the family’s Lincoln Towncar with my dad. Rather than having the long, luxurious locks I had envisioned in my four year old brain, I sported a short moppy hairdo that flipped out randomly depending on its mood (I was still a brunette, too). And love? Well, that would not find me for another seven years.
I mention all of this because often I find myself still looking forward to various milestones within my life. At various points, this has taken the form of different things: going to college, getting married, having my first child. All have come and gone, but each of them turned out to be very different than what I imagined. Today, my milestones are leaving the military lifestyle, settling down in Texas, owning our first home. Sometimes it feels like I look forward so much to the milestones, that I forget to look at the journey along the way. It’s a shame, too, because the extraordinarily mundane moments of our life is what makes up our journey and gives richness to who we are.
When reading Michael Crichton’s book, Jurassic Park (obviously the pinnacle of deep reading), I was struck by a point made by Ian Malcolm. While explaining the concept of fractals, he suggests that if you examine the overall shape of a thing (take for example, a mountain) that the closer you begin to investigate that object, the more you will see that same basic shape in smaller forms: a specific peak on that mountain, for example, right down to a speck of rock under the microscope. To quote him from the book, “A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there…And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”
I bring all of this up simply to say that so often we live our lives reaching for the pinnacle moments, not realizing that it’s not really the peaks after all that make up the shape of our lives. It’s the everyday moments that give our life structure and meaning.
Perhaps instead of constantly looking ahead to moments that have not yet arrived to give our lives order and purpose, we should slow down, breathe in the sights and sounds of the here and now, and realize that this….today is the shape of our lives. Years from now, what is it about today that I want to remember?
It’s the wind blowing through my daughter’s hair as she climbs up the hill at the end of the street.
It’s the look in my daughter’s eye as she decides if what I am saying to her should be taken seriously or ignored.
It’s the memory that this could be the worst thing that has ever EVER happened to her.
It’s the leaves my daughter picks from the trees and scatters around the house and in our shoes to find days later.
These are the moments that shape my life and give it the fullness of living.
As a wise man once said:
“How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?”
-Fred Rogers
What do you want to remember about today?
Christina Freeman is a McKinney TX child photographer, specializing in family, newborn and maternity portraits in the Dallas, TX and surrounding areas including Anna TX, Melissa TX, Van Alstyne, McKinney, Plano, Frisco, Allen, Celina and other Dallas suburbs.
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