I have an uncle who is one of the smartest men I have ever known. A brilliant mind, a thoughtful husband, a father, a grandfather, and a man who has spent the last several years sitting in a nursing home while the world he once knew continues turning without him.
That brilliant mind is still there somewhere, but the memories that filled it have slowly slipped away.
My aunt visits him every day. After more than fifty years of marriage, she is still showing up for the man she promised to love through better or worse.
Life has been better, but now the days are worse, and she should not be eating lunch with him in a nursing home cafeteria. She should be sitting on the patio with him on a beautiful morning, sharing coffee and a cinnamon roll. She should be enjoying a martini beside him while watching the evening news. She should be reminding him to brush his teeth before climbing into bed.
Those are the little things that make a marriage. The ordinary moments that become extraordinary only after they are gone.
My cousin should be able to call her dad and tell him about his granddaughter. They should be sitting together in a gymnasium, watching the next generation of the family knock down three-pointers. He should be cheering, offering advice nobody else can give, and bragging about a young lady who carries a little piece of him into the future.
Instead, they are left carrying memories he can no longer share.
I am not sure why today's Chalkboard quote immediately made me think of my uncle.
"Happiness is the ability to forget."
At first glance, that seems like a strange philosophy. We spend our lives gathering memories, collecting experiences, and hanging on to the moments that give our life meaning. Why would forgetting any of them make us happier?
Perhaps because there is a world of difference between forgetting what hurts us and forgetting what makes us who we are.
The human mind is our personal historian, but a lousy judge of what belongs in the archives. It remembers insults longer than compliments, failures more than triumphs, and those embarrassing moments that everyone else forgot twenty years ago.
We carry around grudges, disappointments, and old arguments like they are valuable treasures. Every once in a while, we dust them off and allow them to ruin another perfectly good Saturday morning.
What a shitty waste of happiness.
My uncle didn't choose to forget. Nobody would willingly trade fifty years of love, laughter, family dinners, Christmas mornings, and a magnificent nephew for an empty page.
…And yet, those of us fortunate enough to remember everything often choose to fill our pages with things that make us miserable.
There has to be a cruel irony in all of that.
Maybe happiness isn't really the ability to forget. Maybe it is the wisdom to know what deserves remembering.
Forget the damn insults and the useless grudges. Forget the bastard who cut you off in traffic. Forget the argument you won twenty years ago that nobody gives a shit about anymore.
…But remember the cinnamon rolls. Remember the martinis during the evening news. Remember the laughter around the dinner table and the sound of a basketball bouncing across a gymnasium floor.
Remember the people who loved you, especially when remembering becomes something they can no longer do for themselves.
My auntie remembers enough for both of them now, and perhaps that is the most beautiful, heartbreaking definition of love I can imagine.
As for the rest of you Chalkheads, there is a smiling sun on today's board. Take a moment to stand beneath it and measure the length of your shadow. The longer that shadow stretches, the more yesterdays we have been fortunate enough to collect.
Some of those yesterdays will hurt and others will make us smile.
We don't get to choose how long our shadows grow, but while the sun is shining, we can choose what we carry with us.
Never forget where the sun is in your life and never forget the people who helped make it shine.
Have a fanfuckingtastic Saturday, you gorgeous Chalkheads.
