just my thoughts.... on remembering the past.

they say you can never go home again.... and the older i get, the more i realize that this is true.... over the years, the house that i grew up in was sold, my high school no longer exists, many of the buildings and places i went are gone or remodeled.... so no matter how much i wanted to relive the past or just visit, it's not possible.... it's kind of sad when you think about it.... sometimes the best medicine is having a sense of belonging and place in the world.... and sometimes the best way to do that is to visit familiar places.... but if they're no longer there what do you do....? that's something that's bothered me for quite some time.... as i seem to lose a sense of these places and forget what they were like and also i've found that the older i get the more my memory fades and this is sad.... i suppose this also holds true for other memories.... it scares me to think that as we get older the things that once seemed so important can just vanish and be gone.... this is why i tend to hang onto things to help me remember those important dates, places and people.... so they'll never truly be gone and i can go back and visit there whenever i want.... it's why if you went through the boxes of things that i've carted around with me from house to house, apartment to apartment and dorm to dorm.... you'd see a collection of odds and ends and nick nacks and various things that may not make sense to the average viewer, but to me have all the meaning in the world.... sometimes i joke that, "If it wasn't for muscle memory, i'd have no memory at all.".... that honestly rings true a lot of the time....

now before you think i'm some kind of hoarder.... keeping every single piece of paper i was ever given.... i keep things to a bare minimum.... just enough to keep that shred of life still alive.... and not only does it keep it alive, but it keeps it grounded.... as over time we all tend to romanticize things.... right....? we remember them not as they were, but as we wanted them to be.... or how our mind has transformed them over the years.... like the time you were on a moonlit dock in Colorado, up in the mountains and watching multiple falling stars with no light but the moon, when you shared your first kiss with the girl that changed your life.... it sounds too good to be true.... but when you keep the right things to remind you of that experience then you know exactly what happened.... sometimes trinkets are not enough.... i find that writing helps.... almost like journaling.... but a bit more creative to give it some flair.... this way you have an on the spot account of exactly what happened while it's fresh in your mind.... it's like carrying around a video camera to record every important event in your life.... because i don't know about you, but i always want to have the memories to hold on to.... as what has happened in the past has made us who we are today.... and also, we don't want history to repeat itself with the bad stuff, right....? i think we've all been there before.... so what's the point of all this....? it's just something that's been rattling around in my head for days now.... and something i just had to get down somewhere to think it all out and put in in some semblance of order.... and with this blog, what better way to do that.... and maybe, just maybe.... i'm not alone in what i do.... maybe everyone does it in their own way.... i think it's just human nature to want to relive the past.... the good and the bad.... i find that at least once a day, i'm recalling something from some part of my life.... and applying it to the day at hand.... whether it be something from the day before or 20 years before.... it doesn't matter.... the joy of living is just that.... and is something that we should always have to hold on to.... because we are the sum of our parts and i think in order to truly understand ourselves we have to understand where we came from.... it's just that simple.