The Direction of Intention

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“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.” George Santayana

Memory is a construct. It is a story that changes in the re-membering. It is not fixed in time. It is not truth. It can be contradictory as what once seemed so difficult now is storied as the most potent learning experience of your life. What once seemed so important in the retelling is insignificant. The smallest gesture can leave the greatest mark. The sequence of events is malleable. Just as eyewitness testimony is proving to be untrustworthy, your eyewitness testimony about your past is equally unreliable. You create your past again and again and again.

Even so, we root our limitations deep in experiences from the past, experiences that we claim to be true. Some of the limitations we impose on ourselves are useful as locators: we know who we are by the rules we maintain and the boundaries we embrace. Some of the limitations are unnecessary, shackles we embrace none-the-less. We invest in our pain and argue for our confinement.

Memory is necessarily a paradox.

Change happens when you can change your story, when you can change your relationship to the story you claim as your past. Growth is not possible when you hold onto the story as you’ve always named it. Growth happens when you can open your hand and let go of the story that says, “you can’t…” or “you’ll never be….”

What if the story you tell yourself is neither true nor false? What if it is simply a story with multiple interpretations and you get to choose which version you claim? What would it take for you to open your hand and let go of the old story?

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