If You Really Liked It, You Will Never Forget It
If you really liked it, no matter how short it was, you will never forget it. For there is love whose memory still gives us light, thanks to the spontaneous kisses and the looks that said everything without the need for a single word. There are memories we can return to in secret, and even if love was short-lived, there is no reason to consider it a mistake if it made us happy.
There are people who say that our memories are like a clumsy puppy. We throw it a ball and it comes back with whatever it finds on the way. The brain works through associations; what it brings back from the coffin of memory is never exact and it tends to throw out many details and just retain the essence of the story. But it’s good to know that there is something it likes, and those are happy moments.
It is important to think of another detail regarding good memories. What we enjoyed for a short period of our lives will only be integrated into our emotional memories in a meaningful way if we interpret the experience as transcendental and positive.
Whether we believe it or not, this is not always easy; especially if we are talking about emotional relationships. Because sometimes so for what was short with long periods of tears. How, then, can we cling to the “positive” side of these opportunities in life?
What you enjoyed deserves to be appreciated
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a well-known psychologist from the University of California, who specializes in studies related to happiness. With books such as The Myth of Happiness , she gives us a different focus in positive psychology.
According to this author, we must put behind us the past if we are to achieve prosperous and maximum personal potential because it is irrelevant to the present. For here and now. Although we can understand this focus, the truth is that it is something very complicated to put into practice.
People are made up of memories, we are made up of the feeling of that first kiss, the smell of that pie that grandma made for us, and we are also made up of the tears that have been secretly shed at every defeat in life. Before we look for that “magic pill” that can erase bad memories, it is better to “rediscover them”.
What you enjoyed deserves to be appreciated and what you mourned deserves to be seen from another, more harmonious perspective. If a love was short-lived and disappointed you, stick to what you experienced. If a person betrays you, stick to what you learned. If you made a mistake, do not keep thinking about it. Take a deep breath and let your mistakes be your best way to learn.
The importance of positive memories
We all know that memory is selective, that it is not precise, and that it likes to interpret things in its own way. Just as we pointed out at the beginning, the brain likes to interpret what happened in a positive and enriching way.
It is interesting, for example, how the same experiences can sometimes seem so different depending on which perspective you adopt. To understand this a little better, let’s imagine we’m going on vacation with our partner. When we arrive, it’s just bad weather every day when we’re there.
Some time later when we talk about this with our partner, he remembers this as bad luck; it was a waste of money. However, we ourselves interpret it in a different way, that it was something very significant and special despite the rain, and that we could spend more intimate time in the hotel room with our partner.
It would have been great for our well-being to have that natural ability to see things from other perspectives. With other frameworks that can be adjusted to what we experienced and make this something more positive and enriching. Martin Seligman, the father of modern positive psychology, suggests something that can undoubtedly help us understand this.
In his book Authentic Happiness , he explains that one of the best exercises to promote positive memories is to try to be grateful for something every day. This may seem ironic or even “spiritual” to many of our readers, but in reality it is a very effective exercise.
Being grateful is like running an experience through a filter. There is always something left, remnants that are barely noticeable, but that shine like diamond powder. This is where we find the real lessons, where we see what we enjoyed and what will be worth remembering.
Maybe that puppy deep in our memory is not really that clumsy. Even if he does not retrieve that ball that we threw, it is very possible that he will return with something that we wanted back: an important memory that we have stored and that we can now appreciate as something positive.
For those who can remember the past without pain, have the chance to enjoy the present with passion.
