Making the most of memories, good and bad, to decide what you’ll do again — and what you won’t
My youngest son was in the third grade when he won the privilege of bringing the class pet home for the summer.
I had the definite impression that this little creature would be something soft and furry like a bunny, but it turned out to be a rat whose highest aspiration in life was to bite things, mostly me. I remember everything about that rat! Every detail is engraved permanently in my mind.
Summer is a great time for choosing new activities and deciding what you really don’t want to do. Ever again. Like give shelter to a rat. Nope. I can’t recommend that.
Sometimes, though, you know right away how to create summer memories — what you’d like to do again.
I have a friend who climbed Machu Picchu a couple of months ago. Regina Carey is an executive coach so of course she did everything right. Her training was impeccable. She sent incredible pictures of the breathtaking climb, the wonderful people she met, and the women sherpas.
“Unforgettable journey, physically pushed my limits!” she enthused.
Would she do it again? “Absolutely not!!” she says, without hesitating for a moment. I pushed up my chin which had just struck the floor in amazement. Why not? It sounded so wonderful!
“What I would do instead?” she asked, “Mix in a vacation where I was taken care of in between the more treacherous adventures.”
How we remember an event makes a big difference in whether we’ll try again. According to a recent CBC podcast, The Memory Mirage, “We used to think that our experiences were recorded in our brains like a videotape which we could play back accurately. However, we’re finding that memories are more often written in water — meaning our life experiences probably didn’t happen exactly how we remember them.”
And I couldn’t get that rat out of my mind, so I wrote to my son about my memory and this is what he replied.
”That’s not really what happened,” he wrote back. “The class had four lab rats. It was sort of an intro to psychology lab lesson for third- or fourth-graders. At the end of the unit, the rats needed homes. So the teacher said we’d have a raffle to see who got them.
“Only four students got their parents’ permission to enter the raffle. Serious miscalculation on your part,” he remarked. “So, we won the rat. Owned it about a year, which was longer than I would have liked. It bit me a couple times. We ended up finding a new home for it with a student who ‘won’ another one of the rats.
”I am pretty sure the class named the rat Snowball. Having a lab rat for a pet is an overrated experience. But it took a while to talk someone else and their parents into taking Snowball in. As far as I know, Snowball lived a happy life once we found him a new place to live. But Snowball was probably happier with the company of another lab rat.”
I don’t remember any of that, but here’s one thing I have learned: There’s almost always a way to use fading memories to bring new joy to a situation if you take a minute to look.
My mountaineering friend Gina Carey discovered that her mother had made the same journey up Machu Picchu at about the same age she is now, so Gina made the decision to carry her mother’s ashes on her pilgrimage. She shared this memory.
”Being where my mother walked was powerful. I would touch a rock and wonder if she did, too. Our journeys were very different but knowing that her ashes are there for eternity makes my heart sing!”
Recently, touched by all of these memories, I asked my youngest son’s two sons for ideas about how we could keep in touch even though we’re far apart in miles and communication styles. The young men had great ideas.
Younger Grandson, true to his generation, isn’t much for phone calls or letters but he shares frequent You Tube videos of current events that interest him, which provides me with great insight into how he’s looking at things. I can reply with my memory of similar events, and he replies with an abbreviated (one word) version of his take. This is daily. A big improvement.
Older Grandson shared an idea to build on. He gets off work at a large Midwestern company at 4 p.m. — 2 p.m. PDT. Every Wednesday, he starts his car and calls me here in the Pacific Northwest, and we have a half hour to talk about things we never could have shared otherwise as we ride home together.
Now, that’s unforgettable!
Dorothy Wilhelm is a columnist, humorist, speaker and broadcaster for the four decades.
Where to find Dorothy in August
Dorothy Wilhelm hosts the Swimming Upstream Radio Show podcast at www.swimmingupstreamradioshow.com
Aug. 11: “Generation Gap — Let me give you some good advice.” Ray Miller Still with Coach Jim Johnson on how meaningful advice changes as the generations change.
Aug. 18: “Climb Every Mountain, Part 1.” Executive Coach Regina Carey climbed Machu Picchu this summer. She got help and advice from Joyce Perrin, now 87, who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro 20 years ago. In Part 1, they talk about the preparation and how they helped each other.
Aug. 25: “Climb Every Mountain, Part 2.” Executive Coach Regina Carey and author Joyce Perrin talk about their successful climbs of Machu Picchu and Kilimanjaro.
