How You Are Destroying Your Memories

The antidote is learning to reflect

“There is a terrible cost to our busyness: it erodes memory.” — Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God

We can be so busy building a life that we don’t take time to reflect on significant moments. Without reflection, memories don’t get the chance to marinate and they lose the savor they deserve.

We attempt to fill this gap by documenting every moment, filling our smartphones with photos and selfies and pasting everything to social media, thereby cheapening those moments that deserve reflection and lifting the lesser to heights they were never destined for.

The everyday and ordinary things in life are to be treasured as life-filled moments from God, but we run the risk of fragmenting and weakening the truly spectacular times — those life markers — by elevating every moment as something worthy of glorification.

Like Mr. Incredible says about his wife’s attempt to downplay their child’s superpowers so the other children won’t feel bad: “If everyone is special, then no one is special.”

How do we capture those times worthy of reflection and inward remembrance? How do we store away what’s special and how can we pay attention to the seemingly small moments that make up a life?

By building margin and reflection time into our lives.

A life without margin robs you of time to reflect on the things that matter.

In the pursuit of things I thought I wanted, I eroded the margin in my life. The result was an out-of-balance, distracted life with no time for the pleasure of simply being in the presence of those I love or the opportunity to savor what was happening right before my eyes.

My children were zipping from stage to stage, my dreams were decaying in the back of a closet where I had stashed my portfolio of writing pieces, and the memories that should have mattered to me were growing dim from lack of reflection.

I failed to catalog what mattered because my life was too full of things that didn’t.

Margin gives us room to reflect, look inward, ruminate on our memories, and lay markers on the remembrances of our lives. We do this by marking moments of intensity without judgment — times of sorrow, times of joy — neither labeling them good or bad — just remembering them for what they were, what they taught us, and how they changed us.

Reflection offers us time to heal, to process, to cherish. Don’t short circuit the reflection process in your life.

Reflection is like a cup of tea after a good meal — kick up your feet, loosen your belt, with nothing on your plate — it’s the opposite of rushing.

Rushing is the destroyer of reflection, it fills our minds from margin to margin leaving us no free space to reflect.

Rushing causes the past to recede quickly — moments shelved and stuffed away in drawers without being sorted, organized, and recorded.

Rushing brings moments not yet lived into the present as we think about our next steps while literally taking the present ones — it robs us of now.

Unable to be fully immersed in the right-now because we’re planning, scheming, and worrying how we’ll get there on time, fit it all in, what we’ll say, and if we’re prepared, we lose focus on what matters at the moment.

Rushing and busyness are like locusts, eating up everything before our eyes — nothing left of what was and destroying what is before us.

“Being in a hurry…getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing…through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away.” -from One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp

Rushing is the enemy of reflection and busyness erodes presence. One simply cannot live fully in the present when they are rushing through life, and when crowded thoughts push away reflective ponderings.

A Sabbath lifestyle is the antidote for rushing.

It’s the practice of slowing down and recognizing that enough is now and this moment is the one we should choose to live in.

Even though I’ve spent the last few years learning to be present and have developed margin in my life, it’s still ingrained in me to work whenever the opportunity presents itself — regardless of the cost or what I have to say no to in order to earn the bucks.

It occurred to me recently, when I was driving home from a contract job, that I still need to give myself permission to rest and leave room for better things. Talking to my husband I expressed how tired I was and he said, “You don’t have to say yes to every job that is offered.” Relief flooded my anxious mind. After all this time of practicing rest and banishing should, I still needed my husband to tell me it was okay to just say no.

There are times to lean in and press hard in a task and there are times to let go and let someone else have the privilege. Everything isn’t meant for me and I must choose wisely.

How can you practice reflection each day?

• A time of silence allowing the memories of the day to wash over you.
• A journal for detailing and mining the busyness for gems of remembrance.
• A soak in the tub and gratitude prayers.
• Keep a memory book with photos and journal entries.
• Talk things over with those you love at the end of the day.
• A family journal kept at the kitchen table for impromptu reflections.
• Evening walks under the stars to still your mind and reflect.
• A prayer altar to reflect and pray.

Reflect: to think, ponder, or meditate. By choosing to do this each day, you can keep busyness from hijacking your life and your memories.

How do you reflect and ponder to capture the important memories of life?