Rainy day thoughts: Accountability

I heard recently that we are more likely to remember painful or frightening experiences over long periods of time than we are likely to remember joyful ones. For example, ask a room full of people in their fifties and sixties to clearly recall a happy memory from first grade, a moment of pride or achievement, and maybe half of them will raise their hands; but ask them to remember a traumatic experience, and chances are that every person will have something (or many things) to share. Why is that? Does it go all the way down to our primal fight or flight instincts? Do we hold on to things that hurt us so that we won't let them happen again? How is it possible that over time our minds linger, caught in unhappy memories while letting the pleasant ones float away. Try it yourself. How often do we forget the sort of Sunday afternoons of life? The trips for ice-cream or to the movies.. We lose the simple joys of our life - the times where things maybe weren't perfect, but they were good - we let them melt into a collage of almost mythic happiness locked away in our past, like some perfect summer of memories, while on the other hand we hold onto those things that pain us most, and let those experiences shape us as human beings. I think about this, and can't help but feel that the details of those happy memories are so important. The jokes you told while stuck in traffic on the way to a baseball game, or the rules of the make-believe game you invented with your friends at recess... they are the details that ground our good experiences in reality. Can you remember all the details of a good day in school? ... Can you remember all the details of a bad one?

In addition to that, I feel like we often discredit the opinions of people who care the most about us. How often does it take a complete stranger to tell us something our friends and family have been trying to tell us too before we truly believe it? That bit of objectivity offered from someone who doesn't have to have our best interests at heart allows us to finally accept whatever it may be we need to hear. Again... Why is that? I don't know. But I think it's true.

Of course that's one reason I think we all need friends, and people to care about us. At least, I know why I value mine. I think a friend can hold you accountable for who you are. A good friend tells you when you're being a schmuck as easily as they tell you when they're proud of you. Well, no, maybe not as easily - it's never easy to criticize someone you care about, is it? But they do it anyway, because they do care. I would always hope that the people I have in my life would know when to let me be and when they need to call me out on something. It's those people who know and love us best that can help us avoid hanging on to the painful memories, because we trust that they'll push us back in the right direction if we're wandering off. Of course, then you also have to trust that they will be able to recognize when that path changes. Because it does, doesn't it? Life is constantly changing. (Oh wow - that sure sounds emo... But seriously.) The lesson I am always re-learning is that we don't all of the sudden grow up and have our act together, the growing up part is in being able to handle things when they don't go as planned. To set goals for yourself, and then go about accomplishing them. But there is something to be said for living life gracefully. It's not easy to maintain one's integrity and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that those who are able to are courageous, honorable people. Life happens in the little moments and it takes a patient, self-sacrificing person to do it really well.




I've been lucky lately to realize that I have many of these people in my life, so thanks.