Live Life and Create Lifelong Memories

Picture Credits: My friend Timsy

The above image and the message below might not make sense to you at first. But just hold on, read the entire post and then come back again.

The other day I was on an evening walk and I saw her. She looked black to me and it took me some time to recognise her. When she came closer to me, I greeted her and said “Aunty ji Namste”. She reciprocated with warmth and love and we exchanged our few conversations.

She had covered her head with scarf as usual. There was no sign of grief and sorrow on her face. Though, she had reduced a lot.

Smiling her face always was, I never knew that she would be in her bed soon, fighting with stage IV- Cancer.

If you read the above story, and unwrap it, you will find a beautiful gift inside it.

The Gift of Memories.

Let me try to help you with unwrapping of this gift.

How do I remember her?

Well, I remember her as a lady who is full of life, happy and smiling face, loves her family, enjoys gardening and keep herself always engaged. She has lived her life on her own conditions and enjoyed her life the way she had always wanted to live. Though she is on bed at the moment, but after talking to her I can feel how she has lived her life and that makes all the difference. Today morning she was still smiling and blessing, despite impending towards the inevitable.

Now look at life. Life seems to be nothing except a beautiful collage of memories just like the image above that we create with our family, friends, teachers, mentors, neighbours, colleagues and other people with whom we meet and connect.

Remember our childhood? Remember the way we played with our friends? The way our parents spent time with us? Our college life, where we explored ourselves? Work life where we met with so many interesting people who contributed us in making of what we are today?

I mean this is how life seems to be just like a storyboard full of memories.

Take any name, remember that face and see how do you remember and relate to that person.

But wait, there is something more that we need to understand about this gift.

The memories that we create might differ from one person to another and that is what we need to take care. We need to be intentional about creating our memories. By making the right choices. Right, again is relative here. I can’t explain to you but you can use your own judgement here.

It’s like following habit no 2 by Steven Covey, Begin With the End in Mind.

We all know where we have to go one day, important is how do we prepare for that destination and how much we live, explore and give before we exit from the life’s stage. Don’t consider this as one of those gloomy thoughts, but take this as one of the life transforming thoughts which may change our entire perspective towards family members, friends, neighbours and people in whose contact we come across.

This gives us advantage to live life with our heart and mind. It allows us about playing the game of our life and enjoying it to the fullest. Winning and loosing, does not matter then. Playing is the only thing which remains.

I know some of us are already using this gift, but we can be more intentional and caring about it. Using this gift is important.

We can write individually about how we would want to be remembered by our grandparents, parents, siblings, spouse, friends, teachers, mentors, neighbours, colleagues and other people in whose contact we come.

It might be possible that we are doing very well in one area of our life and with some people, but in some relationships our equation might not be that good. By doing this, we can always be ourself and check where we go wrong. Although, to decide what is wrong and right is little relative here.  But it is about checking our core values and principles and for that we might have to dig a bit more deeper in our own selves.

I feel this is a very powerful exercise because it allows us to have a micro and macro look. What I want to convey here is to be intentional about our relationship and creating memories in the right direction. Connecting with people who matter most to us in life and enjoying our life’s journey with them to the fullest.

This provides us with one of those route maps from where we can have a bird’s eye view of our life and then can decide where we want to move and then can make small changes in our life in the direction where we want to move ahead. These small decisions will help us to design the way we want to design our life. Fulfil the dreams that we want to live and work on the goals that we want to achieve. It’s possible that we may not be able to reach to some of our goals, but we may become one with that goal and our journey may become our destination. What matters is how do we create those memories.

Now think of a name. Take out pen and paper. Write how would you like to be remembered. Write, because it has power.