I often wonder… how much of this wildly insane “social experiment” am I going to remember on the other side of this journey? I know that I will remember the milestone moments… the truly unique characters… the aspects that weave my real life into the fabric of my ‘for now’ life but what about the insanity that takes place every single day in one way or another in here… will any of that become memory… only time will tell. I was standing outside the unit on Friday evening… it was a beautiful night and as I tend to do on nights like that… I try to be outside as much as possible… staring out over the ocean thinking about being able to jump over that gate like Will Smith in ‘Hancock’ and go find my boys. As I am mid ‘evening dream’… my bunkie walks up behind me and stands there next to me in silence for a moment… clearly deep in his own ‘evening dream’. Now… he is about 28 days from being released so his dreams are much more tangible and intense than my own at the moment but I am a pretty good dreamer so I feel confident in my ability to hold my own independent of my day count to the door. About a minute goes by and then he says… “I don’t think I am going to remember any of this man…” (we are both looking out over the yard at about 400 guys milling about)… “I’ll be walking down an isle at Target with the kids and this whole thing and everyone in it will just disappear”. I look at him… a bit dumbfounded because I have never talked to him about my similar internal question as to my memory of this experience but clearly… he has had the same thoughts. “I think about that all the time man… you’ll have to tell me if you’re right once you get out there”…. I say to him. We continue to gaze out over the ‘circus’ until the bell rings… and like Pavlov’s dogs… we hurriedly scurry back inside the unit.
I continued thinking about the notion though… memory… and how we experience such an insane amount of life that we simply just “forget” happened as we venture into the next moment or day or experience. And as I continued down this rabbit hole of a thought process… I started thinking about the memories that we do remember… the ones that shape us and influence our decisions and emotions and interactions as we navigate life. I think about the fact that as we grow older and stack memory on top of memory… we begin to lose some of the clarity of those earlier mental movies. For me… I try so hard to hold onto the times that I had with my boys prior to walking through these gates. I desperate attempt to recreate our time together… running out the front door with my oldest on my shoulders to catch a glimpse of the garbage truck outside our house… giving my youngest a bottle before bedtime in his room when the world disappears and it is just me and him… I have a true need to hold onto the moments. But then I think about them… how young they were when I physically left them and it kills me that their memory banks of having me actually with them are extremely lite. My oldest may have a couple tangible memories that he can hold onto but my youngest was too little to have any and that breaks my heart. Yet another one of the consequences of my decisions and actions that I must live with and do my best to strengthen the bond that we do have until we can start to form new memories together on the other side of the journey.
As the lack of memories that my boys have of me being physically in their life is certainly not ideal… I was struck with some perspective when an article caught my eye a couple hours after I began writing what you are reading right now. The article followed 3 different people as they travelled around the globe… the commonality between them… they are all blind. They discussed the fact that traveling without the ability to see certainly has it’s hardships but the joy of the experience and the richness of the other 4 senses far outweigh the negatives. They touched on the fact that we live in such a visual world… Instagram posting and all… basically all facets of our experiences start with our eyes. From the food that we “taste” visually before we actually put it in our mouths to our connection to the people around us… what we see and how we see it paints the picture of our adventures. But if we cannot see… we must use our other senses and our connections to the people and places that we “touch” along the journey to shape our experience. And through using these senses… at least with these travelers… they emphasized the idea that they may not be able to experience everything and every where that a seeing traveler can but the quality of the experiences that they do immerse themselves in is unbelievably rich.
This got the wheels turning and a welcome perspective shift about our memories and how it isn’t necessarily about how many memories we have with each other or with a time or a place or an experience… it is about the quality of these memories. The richness of the interactions. Although I wish I could be physically with my boys and my tribe for all the things that this life has to offer… I can live with the reality of having less memories during this time in our lives but having deep… genuine… present… full experiences that will eventually become memories on the other side of this journey. Because I am and will continue to become a deeper… a more genuine… an ever present Dad and Man… because of this missed time and the perspective that it has forced me to recognize. I will cherish every single moment and (I hope) never take the “small” things for granted because no time spent with our people is small… there truly is nothing bigger when you know how it feels to not have it in your life.
So… I choose to focus on the notion of quality over quantity and accept that there is nothing that I can do to implant memories into my boys’ minds during my physical absence in life today but you better believe that we have a whole life time of memories to be made in the years to come.
For those of you out there with your ‘tribe’… cherish the moments… go on the trips… put the phones away… be presently alive in the experiences that will eventually become memories because you will never know how good you have it until it’s too late.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay Makin Those Memories.