I’m spending some time with my parents this week for the Thanksgiving holiday and week and it’s been an incredible pleasure of relaxing, eating really really well, and catching up with the family. Since our proper family includes 7 people in total it can be difficult for all of us to gather at one single place at the same time – in fact, the last time we shared a meal together was a few years back.
Time passes far too fast and things are changing in each of our lives with just as much speed. New marriages, new kids, new jobs, new relationships (boyfriends/girlfriends), and new living arrangements are all happening all at the same time. I have the problem of even remembering all the birthdays let alone all the recent changes I see in emails via my inbox!
Yikes. If I could slow things down I would – I simply do not know how.
An interesting thing occurred while I’ve been here that has had me thinking deeply about the power of memory, especially memories or experiences that impact us on levels unbeknownst to us.
For example, the above video is a collection of three drummers electronically attached together drumming in-sync with each other. My family purchased these three around Christmas time 1995 – it’s been literally 17 years that these three have been with us! And they still work, perfectly, just like they did when we first bought them.
The thing is that my sister discovered that she uses the exact same pattern of tapping when she’s studying or in class as the drummers! She had no idea and was shocked when she heard it recently, matching it mentally with the pattern that she had thought she had created uniquely.
I suppose it makes a bit of sense since she was only a few years old at the time when we had first purchased them but she had retained that tune or beat her entire life, only to recently manifest in her study halls.
Incredible. Although a particular pattern of tapping your pencil isn’t quite such a big deal it makes me wonder what things have influenced myself (and all of us) historically that we have very little recollection of; experiences (both good and bad), relationships (good/bad), and many such things.
It also made me wonder if any of these elements in my own life are 1) possible to diagnose and analyze and 2) if they need to be corrected. Deep thoughts, I know, but interesting none the less.
There are things in our past that have shaped and formed us into who we are today. Some of these things we recognize and some we do not – I wonder how often we think about the latter.
