I don’t know what triggered it. I was sitting out on my glorious porch, reading while the sun set gracefully over the mountains. My neighbor was watching a movie, Notting Hill, and I recognized the dialogue wafting through the open window. The last scene came up, the song “She” playing loudly when suddenly it hit me.
I got caught up in remembering one of the most glorious feelings that is mixed with so many emotions, I cannot tell which parts were real once, and which parts I made up in the recollection.
For all I can come up with, that movie has nothing to do with anything in my past.
This is the problem. I remember some moments so vividly and with such full-on clarity that, in the second of recall, I forget that the emotions spring from so many breaths ago, it's as though they should only come up as whispers, as shadows, rather than as expectations. Other moments I can scarcely bring into my periphery, even those that quite possibly changed everything.
How do our brains choose? How do our minds separate, categorize? Why will some things become reality, and others remain, long-distant memories?
5 comments:
Hello! I stumbled upon your blog a few months ago, and have been following it ever since. I quite enjoy your thoughts and reflections, as well as links you provide to other sources of thought and reflection.
As for this post, I totally understand! I will have moments where something triggers a memory of something long forgotten, and the accompanying emotions. Other times, someone will ask me something significant about my past, and I can barely recall the event.
How DOES the brain choose? I took a whole course on memory in my undergrad psych degree, and still never got an answer.
I work with young children and try to be especially sensitive to what memories I help create in their lives. I don't remember much from the age of four, but there are specific moments in my early past that definitely have stuck for some reason or another. How do I know that the time I am sharing with children isn't the moment that will stick?
Thanks for commenting, Gina! Memory is such a strange phenomena. It's so good that you're sensitive to that when you're working with kids; you never know what sort of impact you're making in their lives!
Hi ! I also stumbled across your blog purely because my name is Hope Noelle also ! Crazy coincidence considering I have met a few Hope's but never any Hope Noelle's ... especially not with the way Noelle is spelled :) But anyways, I actually loved reading this. You're so descriptive and thoughtful in your writing. It reminds me of a book. I love that Notting Hill is what lead to the triggering of your emotions. Personally, I'm a big fan of the movie, and if it helps, that movie will often trigger long lost emotions and wishful thinking of my own. And yes, it is usually just "too much".
Well, like I said I enjoyed checking out your blog and will now follow it !
Hope Noelle! Thanks for commenting. I've never met anyone else with the same name either-- though once a nurse at the doctor's office told me in a delightfully Southern accent, "If I had ever had a little girl I was gonna name her Hope Noelle and ain't nobody ever known that but me and the Lord, and now you too."
Glad you found me! :)
Thats too funny ! I'm glad also !
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