Q U O T E #3

i may admit something embarrassing in the next few paragraphs...

i am a amateur hoarder. truth. i recently cleaned out my parents attic (which was 3/4 full of my crap). i threw away 4 boxes of trash, sold 4 boxes of treasures, and kept 4 boxes of memories. after all 6 hours working in 80 degree confined spaces and getting 4 or 5 minor cuts/bruises, i still struggled to toss a box of old middle school/high school notes(in fact i might be under my bed right now... but, hey! i never claimed perfection:). EMBARRASSING CENTRAL!   you would think i'd learn my lesson. 

the reason i am sharing all that "crap" is to say that i think the lesson here for me to learn isn't that saving memories is bad. It's more that collecting moments can mean more than saving a note box. yes things can be tied to memories but when the things are shoved in boxes below boxes of cd cases from the 90's you tend to forget the memory anyways. 

when i sifted through the boxes i felt waves of emotions i am not sure i really wanted or needed to dig up. i started to think that maybe those memories weren't memories i needed to hold on to so tightly. maybe the memories i need to hold on to are those images, that play like movie clips in my head, of me snuggled next to my grandpa, watching Animal Planet, and holding his frail hand, weeks before he died. Or those nights driving home from karate (yes...karate...) with my dad, windows down on a summer night listening to songs from the Goo Goo Dolls and Semisonic. think back, what is your first memory? i bet, if you can remember it, it had some sort of impact on your life. i also bet, if you are anything like me, you don't really even remember what you have saved in that old box of scrapbooking stuff you bought in high school and used only a handful of times. 

don't get me wrong, i mean, i do still have 4 boxes of "things" i call memories in the attic. baby books and pictures, dress up clothes and yearbooks, who knows! but i am realizing that time with people i love, and conversations with people i've never met impact my life more deeply than a tiny picture frame someone gave me when i turned 16(a million years ago). sometimes that stuff clouds the way and makes life complicated. my new plan in my life is to learn to simplify a little. to look at what is really meaningful and hold tightly to that because those are experiences that can help guide me through tough times, a box of memories that is hiding can't...

if you have sometime today, dust off the cobwebs in you memory storage, and smile at the things your brain held on too.