Finding Light When Memories Feel Dark

Summary

Finding Light When Memories Feel Dark explores healing from painful memories, resilience, and renewal at hiveaid.org—embracing hidden positives and hope.

What to do if you don’t have any good memories? Realize that you have a good memory or two embedded someplace in your life. These life experiences may have a very brief duration. They may have come at lengthy intervals. But they are there. Be mindful that your memories are a product of your thinking. Your thinking is articulated by how you live your life. Not seeing any good part of your life logically leads to depression and even worst.

You build your memories, so it’s up to you as what type of memories they are. Even with health problems and other difficulties that are out of your control you have the mastery of your thinking. I know that this sounds all sweet and cuddly and that you have heard this over and over again before. I have heard this too.

This is why I repeat this saying to myself as a reminder. I do this when I can only see darkness in my memories and start belittling myself. It’s easy to lose what you have if you do not appreciate it. The lines of my life are not all straight and dimly lit there are shadows and colors throughout them.

What to do if you don’t have any good memories? If a person has lived to be age twelve, they probably have at least one good memory. It’s hard to imagine otherwise. Everyone has at least one good memory. Just as an example, this person can relish that memory. This good memory is undoubtedly deeply submerged within the mind by other life experiences, but it is there.

Your smiling to someone can create a good memory. When they smile back, it gives you a good feeling for that moment. The sound of a bird singing can be delightful. Our sister planet, the Moon, looks wondrous in the day or night sky. Good memories of your past are not hard to find if you want to find them. I must remind myself of this when I want to weep and mourn for myself.

As you can imagine, changing your set way of thinking is a difficult task. You are changing the chemical composition and electrical circuits in your brain when you are transforming your way of thinking. Some people try to do this by the use of certain medications. Others by engaging in a belief system that is greater than them.

While others want to use brute force to change their thinking habits and patterns. Whatever works for you, that is what works for you. I reach out to a source that is greater than me. It helps me find those many hidden positives that have occurred during my life.

Presently my success rate by using this approach is dismal. The issue is not the source. It is because I am a terror unto myself. I want to change the way that I think and yet I resist this change at the same time. Like a seed that will not germinate, I allow the life-giving waters of thought purification to have no effect. They do not influence me.

This is not because my current way of thinking is my comfort zone. On the contrary, my current view of myself and the world is fractured and shattered. It highlights and underlines everything that I dislike about myself and shroud that into a world view.

One thing that has prevented me from tumbling into the deep end of self-loathing is my ability to laugh. I can make fun of myself. I recognize my faults and shortcomings and make an effort to correct them. This is an LTE (Long Term Evolution) process that will take as long as it takes to finish it. I fall on my face daily, get up, and continue the process.

Hopefully, I have learned something valuable each time that I fall that I can use to achieve my goal. I am willing to improve myself. My effort to do so is a good memory. I can feed on this memory from the day or hour before. Good memories are not hard to find if you are willing to find them. Yet, finding those good memories is just the first step. Recognizing them as part of my life’s experiences is next. They exist alongside the not so good memories that I focus on.

Once those good memories are found, I must diligently pitch my tent over them. This is so that the negative electrical charges in my brain are equally balanced with positive ones. There must be a balance. Having too much of a good thing is not necessarily good. It may hinder personal growth because you are using only one pool of your life experiences to pull from.

The electrical impulses migrate, opening new channels and closing old ones. This process changes the chemistry in my brain as well. I hope that all this electrical and chemical modifying will refresh the inner person. This refreshment is needed because the inner person has become stagnant in thinking. I shall see.