Memories and the fight against them

Memories are the things of dreams, so says Disney. Memories have for so long been things to cherish and hold dear. They have been placed in high places in our lives. We revere them, cherish them, and recall them when times are rough. But yet memories have a flip side, a evil stepsister. They can often bring up painful occurrences of the past. They bring to mind things of the past that we wish we had forgotten. It is these things of the past that if we choose to forget often reappear at the worst times. When you are down and feeling low these memories suddenly reapper on the grid of our minds. How is it that we have this silent enemy, this deadly killer. If life was so much simpler. We often quote this to ourselves, we whisper it under the covers of our beds at night with tears streaming down our faces, we scream it out in the pouring rain after a horrible experience. But the face is life is not simple. It wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to test us and force us to grow anyway and by any means possible. These memories come in many shapes, forms, and fashions. It could be a bad breakup with a girlfriend, that time when you caught her cheating on you with another man. It could be the pain of losing a national championship because of your kick and with the tears streaming down your face lying in the mud with the rain whipping at your back. It could be leaving a job you loved prematurely. With all of these memories in my life brings a sharp stabbing pain that penetrates to the very core of who I am. It brings anger, fustration, and deep sadness. But I have learned that it is not the memories that cause pain. It is not the realization of the incident and the immense nature of these memories but it is the fact that we choose to focus on the painful side of the memory. Where is hope? Where is the overcoming the pain? Where is the retribution and the recourse of man in our troubled times. In all of these situations there seems a hopless nature. A sense of great loss and discouragement. But it is the fact that I have chosen to focus on the pain of those situations and not the grand scheme of things and the ultimate total opportunity I had facing in front of me. Yes I was in pain when I caught my girlfriend with another man, but in that pain there laid hope as I shut the door behind me. With her calling my name out in the background as tears streaming down my face I realized there was an amazing girl out there somewhere for me. My options had just become wide open. My horizons were bright. Yes I was horribly sad and low when my kick was blocked and we lost the national championship. But there was hope when my team came over and picked me up out of the mud and stood me on my feet as the mud and tears fell from my body. There was hope in the fact that I knew in my heart I would have the chance to right my mistakes in college someday. I was devastated when I left the White House. As I walked out that cold iron gate and heard that awful sound slam behind me I knew that I would never step foot in that office again while President Bush was in office. But with the slamming of that gate came a slamming of a chapter in my life. As the tears streamed down my face I knew that I was beginning a new chapter in my life with a higher calling and higher stakes. Though the pain was seemingly to great to handle I remembered that love is blind, victory is in the way you look at it, and power is fleeting. These memories will never be lost in the grand scheme of things. The good and bad bring to mind the journey I have traversed. It is so easy to look at the negative. But winners never took the easy way. Great soldiers never took the easy tasks. They made it hard on purpose to grow stonger. Through all the pain I trudge on, ever so slowly towards progress and growth of who I really am. And that is the ultimate goal. A change in who I am. A recalibration of myself as a person. Down to the very atom and molecule I possess in my body.