Reacting to Memories
All experience is memory and we are constantly revising those memories based on new experience.
One moment after you have lived an experience, it becomes a memory. And, revisiting a memory at any time, causes some change to it. You are looking back with today's eyes. And, that look back paints the memory a different colour.
All behaviour is subjective and unique to ourselves. And, it all depends on your choice of words. I say I am being objective, you say I'm not being objective enough. And it's all subjective.
Memories are in your mind. You are the painter. The subjective painter.
Somehow we convince ourselves that we have separate identities. That we have distinct compartments labelled objective and subjective.
The dictionary meaning of a word is not the most important aspect of the word. When you look up the meaning of a word, you pretend for a moment that you have no emotions. That is what being objective means.
Even here, as I try to explain my own thoughts, I am weighing the meaning of the words, not the dictionary meaning but the emotional, rational, physical, and spiritual meaning of the word.
I am a whole person. My mind is not separated like the words suggest. I am rational, emotional, spiritual, and physical all at once. But I have an immense capacity to imagine myself as any one of those at any one time.
We are subjective beings. We are not subdivided beings. Words cannot separate us into parts. We make images in our minds of being individual parts. That is not reality.
Doesn't mean that I succeed in being. I can dream as well as anyone. All behaviour is subjective exactly because I dream up different scenarios. I dream being this supreme being with exact compartments into which I can divide myself.
At the same time, though, the ability to imagine becomes very useful for some tasks I need to carry out. I can think of a behaviour as distinct exactly because I can use a word that is defined. I can express the general sense of that behaviour to others.
But, in fact it does not explain what it means to me. Each word has its own drama attached to it. Drama that I have experienced.
What drama do you attach to your words? And, is it justified? How easily you are upset by small incidents can be a flag that you over-dramatize?
For example, if your spouse does the dishes, do you immediately check their work and scold them if they has missed some small particle on a dish or pan? Do you see that this is 'looking a gift horse in the mouth'? Your spouse did the dishes. That is the important event. Would you minimize that by finding some small fault?
A calmer approach, one that would not cause a family squabble, would be to clean the dish in question and tell them you appreciate them cleaning the dishes. And, leave it at that.
Every bit of your experience is memory. Experience is not so much what you remember as how your remember it. You can relive every experience with drama or you can choose to look at it as just experience.
Even the most traumatic memories can be moved to the past by realizing that you are living in a memory. You are recreating the experience in your mind and creating the drama that you focus on.






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