Thought Picnic: The memories that become our stories

The burden of memory

Memories are burdens we inadvertently lift, given through some experiences we never orchestrated, the accidents in our humanity that could so easily define us.

Be it in people, dates, events, or some feeling and sense that becomes a recollection of significance, we may not be victims of circumstance, but of circumstances that might belie and present opportunity for becoming victims.

Where we choose not to be victims but victors instead, we take some sort of lesson to probably not be found in such a vulnerable position again or to ensure others do not suffer from what has become part of our story, shielded in many ways from scrutiny and accountability of the perpetrators of mischief on our person.

Sheep in wolf jaws

Childhood, something most of us reading this would have experienced can be evocative to various extents. Some of us do have the protections and safety of home and homeliness with strong family structures that extend arms to give opportunities to those who are less privileged than us.

That semblance of security can be exploited by those brought under that umbrella, easy pleasures and stolen innocence concealed in the gentility of respectable existence, exacerbated by the lack of curiosity that corrals and feeds helpless sheep into the salivating lips of ravenous wolves tended as part of the flock.

We live our memories

What many may have forgotten about rarely sinks into total amnesia of the adult who was once a child, some things are too indelible and will never be erased.

Of the scars we carry, they are marks of our living, but thankfully not bleeding sores of harms inflicted decades before. Even where we try, a memory has that grip hold, we have just refused to fold, even if what happened is left untold.