A fellow educator has been posting a number of thought provoking things of late and one has motivated me to expand and share on the thoughts it provoked with me.
The post he shared was mostly about how the character one gains from winning or losing is more important than the result or the trophy, ribbon, medal and so on that you receive.
I feel much the same. The confidence you build, the relationships you build along the way, the lessons you may learn in what you did wrong and how to improve it or the success you had and how to repeat it are other valuable components to the experience that matter more than a trophy.
But my thoughts meandered somewhere else as they often do for me. I connected these thoughts to my own personal experiences that can be related.
Coincidentally, I just unpacked some trophies of mine and wanted to display them. I also unpacked a number of awards my daughter has earned through Special Olympics and at school.
They have been boxed up for a long time. I lived all those years just fine without them. Why did I feel the need to display them?
For my daughter, it was a matter of demonstrating my pride in her. I felt it was important that she had an opportunity to feel proud of herself and see her father was proud and valued that pride enough to want to display her successes and accomplishments.
For now, let's compartmentalize that and put it aside as another topic regarding parenting.
Why did I feel the need to display soccer, bowling and softball trophies with my other sports memorabilia? Who cares? Do I?
My initial answer is that I have always been stubborn about my feelings like I need to prove their validity by sticking with them through time even if I have moved on.
So naturally, I feel this need to validate the pride I felt years ago when my coach called me up in front of the team to present my trophy and complimented my constant hustle. If I let that go, then it never happened.
This is how I have handled many things in life. I get stuck in the past in an effort to validate it or prove I was right.
Does it matter though?
The object that is the trophy probably means little. The memory attached to it is the important part, I would say, assuming the character, confidence, relationships and other invisible traits or personal attributes that came from that experience are intact. Since the memory is worth something, and the trophy reminds me of that memory, than I guess the trophy is important in that respect.
But if we separated the memory and the object, the trophy, means little to me personally.
So if we are to assume I never lose the memory, would the memory in and of itself matter?
Let's say I forgot that season ever happened and I did not have that stubborn need to hang on to old feelings to validate them, would any of it matter?
Again, all the invisible traits and growth from the experience aside, if I lived without the memory and I didn't know I didn't have he memory, who cares?
Isn't the only negative part of forgetting is knowing you forgot it? Or the fear of forgetting something you currently remember?
If you didn't know you forgot the memory, then you would never feel the loss. Therefore, does it really matter?
It is not even the memory that is important anymore. You can live without it just fine. Losing that memory hurts. But not having it means nothing as long as the things you leanred from it are still there and part of you in that independent abstract form that you can't connect to the memory because it is a behavior or a trait or a habit.
This is one aspect f many things I have been thinking about as I unpack things that were once important and I expected to be important now but, really, are not. At first, there is a feeling of loss. Then a feeling of liberation. Being able to let go of some stuff realizing it isn't as important as the stuff happening right now was refreshing. Difficult but refreshing.
It is hard to let go without feeling like I am betraying myself. My old self. Letting the positive memories and attributes of my past go is like letting them die.
But why? And why does it matter now if they do?
It doesn't. Not those objects anyway.
I think of the numerous things I have read lately about living in the present. This is a concept my Father tried to convey to me several years ago as he was learning to do so and wanted to share with me.
Letting go of the past and avoiding the worry of the future is a big step towards living a better life in this way of thinking. It seemed like a lot at the time, but I am now appreciating it more.
It is interesting how this theme runs through numerous philosophies and religions and cultures. I keep hearing, reading or finding it or variations of it. That must mean something.
Naturally, this brings me to a topic I think of frequently: the afterlife.
If one doesn't know of the afterlife, does it matter?
If there is no afterlife, will it matter when we die and we are unaware because we are, dead?
The only time it matters is in the "life" and since we are presently in our life, the presence of life after death or lack thereof means nothing right now. It will only matter when it happens and if it doesn't happen, it won't matter bcause not only will we not experience the afterlife, we won't experience NOT having life after death.
Like realizing it is knowing the loss that matters and not the loss itself, releasing yourself from knowing the loss minimizes the pain of losing if not eliminates it.
