Reminiscence

Reminiscence - remember who you truly are

Reminiscence is very different from sentimentality or ruminating on the past. It is about celebrating and remembering the moments in our life that help to define us. There are many memories that become touchstones in our identity that are like the glue that holds us together. It's not about holding onto the past, thinking about what could have been or if only, but rather honouring what was, as it helps to define me who I am now.

I like to think of this moments as pictures I store in my memory book. My very first picture book memory was at the age of four I remember kissing my next door neighbour in the back garden and saying to myself I'm going to remember this moment forever!

Another was when we got married at the tender age of 8 another friend said mass.  I built a go-kart and my friends attached empty cans to the back and pushed us around the neighbourhood for our honeymoon. By 11 however we were divorced I still have that undeveloped film in the back of my memory book, although it’s more black and white now. As I looked out the window and saw with the boy from around the corner, that monster, walking hand in hand with my neighbour. And ohh the betrayal for one so tender so young!

I suppose this is a good moment to introduce the darker side of my photo album. The photos are still in the dark room. The snapshots that we don’t take ourselves but are imposed upon us and we keep them locked away never developed, just a bunch of negatives.

And yet they are also part of who we are - our identity. It's important to develop these photos to celebrate the more difficult experiences. To be able to hold all these moments of our story in the light and feel that glue those touchstones anchoring us in the world.

I invite you now to take a moment and close your eyes to prepare your inner camera.

Take a deep breath and when you’re ready open your eyes and all your senses to this very moment.Say to yourself I’m going to remember this moment for the rest of my life

Look around take everything in the sounds, smells, images atmosphere.

Let it colour your inner picture until it’s complete.Now see this snapshot slide gently into your inner photo binder.There for whenever you need to take it out.

So when I volunteer at the Simon community Detox centre for homeless people with alcohol addiction this is the work I do. Like Humpty Dumpty they have fallen off the wall or off the wagon in addiction slang and I help to put then back together again. Helping them to open their memory books, to find lost photos, to colour the black and white ones and maybe even develop some of the negatives. 

And of course there is the sense of identity with a small 'i' remembering and celebrating my own story and also the big 'I' connecting to something Other or Transcendent. The writer Eckhart Tolle talks about having my 'ground of being' in both the immanent individual unique expression of self and also in the Transcendent connected non-separate awareness of all life.My photo album changes and as I begin to connect more with the energy or feeling behind the forms. When I look at a beautiful sunset or a scene from nature I'm reminded of that part of myself. It adds a glow to the pictures in my photo book that wasn't there before.

And so the journey of reminiscence is to remember who we are and is the most healing thing in the world. It is the glue that holds us together; it helps us to feel connected, present in the moment and to be at home in the world.