Thread

Looking back

It’s been good, and at times touching, to see people sharing memories on social media, birthdays, anniversaries, photographs of people and places that meant a lot at the time, decades ago, and mean a lot now.

I wonder what memories we will carry forward of this time. There will certainly be some difficult moments that we will want to forget. For some, this will be an even harder time than the hard times they have already experienced.

So we should not forget them, however we respond when we reach the point that we begin to move out of this phase into whatever may lie ahead. There were people already being left behind before this. We must not forget them when we move on.

But we can begin to create our memories now. The actions we take will be the memories of our past, in the future. We can’t control everything but there may be some choices we can make ourselves.

If in 20 years you were asked to share your favourite memories what would they be? Is it worth taking time to take a picture of a bird, or a flower, or something that you see? To take a note of a particular line of poetry, or a verse of a song, that resonated?

We’re probably sharing a lot of photos electronically – of course there will be albums and so on, but is there anything that has special meaning for today? A picture of a place or a person that gave you joy, or peace, or perspective?

What about keeping some sort of scrapbook – electronic, paper, whatever you like – with something from each day that was worthwhile, that was special, or that was important? It will not be the whole picture, but it will be the picture that you chose.