It's Only a Number

Recently I celebrated my birthday. I am now living in my 75th year. It's only a number some would say, but it represents in a numerical way that your life has added up to to a series of events and happenings with dates. The day you were born, your first steps or your first word are all in that list. After that memories take the place of dates. Knowing what year or month becomes secondary to that incident imprinted in your inner mind's eye.

You better remember the date you got married and the birthdays of your wife and children but the thousand other things that happened along the way get shuffled in order of memory. We have a way of bringing events into focus triggered by stimuli. Sometimes it is a piece of music, a picture or just a sound or smell which causes a rush of energy to flood your mind, and we are able to relive those precious moments. Our memories are not all pleasant as life doesn't work that way, but time does modify our perceptions and in some cases, shape an event to better serve our needs.

Some people who are not satisfied with their history according to the facts will re-write it and it will give them a better status until they meet people who know the truth. In my years of a busy life, my memories pile up in a confusion of reality and modified memories. Most of my early childhood thoughts and memories come from repeated stories and if there are different versions from different memories of our family that is fine as memories are just that, memories. While attempting to complete a book of my memories I find a certain pleasure in day dreaming about events that occurred many years ago. Somehow my reality makes a better picture than the actual true account and for this reason I have many more pleasant thoughts than negative.

Since most of my memory is about relationships, there are people who influenced me, shaped me and gave me reason to recall them and their impact on my being. Today as I write,  many thoughts rush through my mind and as I try to recall important landmarks I find that the further I go back in history, the clearer the images appear. I trust this is because these events have been cleared through countless recalls  and are actually fresh in my memory.  It might also be the reason older people are able to remember events from years ago,  but not know where to put the jar of peanut butter after using it.

I look forward to counting my future age by events and memories rather than numbers, as memories are forever - and numbers remind us of too little time left to do all the things we wish to accomplish.