If It Weren't For The Snapshots

I love looking through old pictures. Those times when my family appeared happy with toothy smiles. Well, except for the one when my sister was minus her two front teeth.

There’s a snapshot of her in that stack of pictures from the 60’s when we were on our annual two-week camping vacation on Cape Cod. She was around six years old and wearing her dark red and navy-blue plaid seersucker bathing suit. It was a one piece with white piping on the pockets and yoke. I had one just like it. We would sit at the edge of the shore line at Nauset Beach waiting for waves to come up onto us and deposit sand in our pockets. We would laugh so hard. In the picture of us at the campground, my sister’s wearing her bathing suit with her beloved cowboy boots.

If it weren’t for that stack of snapshots, I don’t think I’d remember too much of my childhood, not the fun parts anyway. As humans, remembering the negative times always seem to stand out more. You’d think we’d hold onto the positives in life, but rather it seems to be the opposite.

I suppose it’s because the negative stories hold more energy and we repeat them in our minds until they dig themselves in and find a comfy home. From there, they can sit at the controls and inform how we think and act.

I truly wish the fun times could hold as much energy. But in a way, it’s the tough times that teach us our strengths and help us grow.

It’s an interesting concept. When we can look at our past, see how it impacts our present and release the energy behind the fear or pain, then we assist others in doing the same. Not that it’s a conscious assisting, but rather our healing creates a shift in the morphic field of humanity - the field that connects us all. Others who share a similar pain are given a healing from the field. That’s why it’s not selfish to focus on ourselves. When we heal ourselves, that healing affects others. It’s a beautiful system.

If we all had only happy memories, it could only mean one thing - that we have resolved all the pain in the world and we are in fact living heaven on earth.

We’ll get there, I know we will. But in the meantime, we have work to do. It’s really incumbent upon us to face our pains. We don’t have them to hold onto, but rather to learn how to let them go. To realize that we have them to assist in the growth and evolution of humanity.

At the same time, we need the memories of happy times because they show what life can be. They remind us of the times when we were in alignment with our soul and that it’s possible to live from that place.

I have a snapshot of my sister with no front teeth, a bathing suit with sand filling her pockets, and wearing her cowboy boots to remind me of how fun life can be and I am eternally grateful for the chuckle.