Honour your memories

One of the best things we do is make memories. Memories become the monuments of our past, they become a sanctuary, they become diamonds; once nothing special, but with enough force and time something remarkable. Memories warm you up from the inside and a sojourn into the past might help you reason with yourself when reason seems lost.

There is a story of a war elephant who was a king’s favourite. He accompanied the king in several battles where he brought victory and glory to his king. The king loved him dearly and treated him with utmost care. Time passed and with old age came limitations for both the king and the elephant. In meeting the demands of everyday life the elephant’s glorious past was easily forgotten. Once this elephant got stuck in a bog. He tried but could not pull himself out of this quagmire.

As the king began to lose all hope, a minister advised that war drums be played around the quicksand with immediate effect. The beat of the war drums revived the memory of a golden time. This memory reminded the elephant that he was brave, tenacious and victorious before and that he could be like that once again. To everyone’s surprise, the elephant actually pulled himself out of the bog and all but ran towards his king. Memory had given new life to both man and the beast.

We’re so caught up in the immediate happenings that memories are often left the way they are; we forget who we were and what we are capable of. My mother, a multifaceted dynamic woman, had fallen into the clutches of her demanding yet quotidian existence. Once while talking to us about the good old days she was suddenly reintroduced to her charismatic self.

Some memories can never be dispatched to oblivion no matter how much time passes or what takes place in the interim. Despite the tight hold of her present, she planned an impromptu trip with her friends to relive the wonderful moments of the past and perhaps revive her former self.

People leave fragments of themselves where they feel most cherished, most worthwhile. Remembering those places, those accomplishments, those journeys, can help us triumph over the listlessness of the mundane.

"What you remember saves you."

― W. S. Merwin