Happy Monday!
Increasing age inspires thoughts about today’s word-of-the-week…
LISTS
Everybody knows we tend to lose our memory as we age. Old guys like me get a pass for forgetting simple stuff like phone numbers and anniversaries.
But we seem to have no problem remembering when someone hurts us. We appear to have an almost supernatural ability to remember others’ mistakes. I may not recall the name of the guy I just met, but I can recite intricate details of how someone let me down years ago.
Am I the only one whose hard drive is programmed to forget his wife’s birthday but store wrongs and hurts forever?
Maybe we need to pay attention to the lists we keep.
Blessings, gifts, and acts of kindness—it’s probably a good idea to keep careful account of those so you can dig them out occasionally when memories fade a bit.
But perhaps I’d do better to keep a shorter, less permanent list of others’ mistakes, their hurtful acts, the times they let me down. Maybe I ought to invest less energy in recording and preserving those memories.
After all, I am getting older. Do I really want to squander my declining supply of brain cells on that years-old feud or that decades-old pain? Why waste my remaining memories by clinging to ancient hurts?
When it comes to wrongs, maybe I need to keep shorter lists.
Have a great week.
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