Take a load off or how to improve your memory

I went for an eye exam today. After confirming that I indeed needed glasses to read the fine print that is used on every label at work, the optometrist sent me over to the sales rep to get proper frames for my lenses. The rep was a rather chatty lady and was immediately familiar with me. By the end of the sale I just about knew her whole life story. As she was telling me things about her life, she said one of her more painful regrets are all the decisions she chose to make that led to the estrangement of her three children.

She went into how she continues to have an irreconcilable way of relating to her ex-husband and that he is making her pay, despite having had the full capacity, financially and otherwise, to let things go and make peace with the so long ago bitter divorce between them. I replied that I am not only friends with my ex-husband, we are actually next door neighbors. She was flabbergasted. I told her there were circumstances involving our children that we both made an agreement way back that we will not burden our children. That if anyone would have to go through additional “burdens”, that that burden would have to be shouldered by me, him or the both of us. The sales rep and I both concurred that it shouldn’t have to take special circumstances to come to that sort of understanding. Yet she said that having one’s ex-husband as a friend and neighbor must be just as bad as having such a non-existing relationship with an ex that any communication, let alone a civilized conversation, is completely impossible. Which partially led to her total estrangement with her children.

It was my turn to be completely flabbergasted. I am fully aware that there are as many reasons not to have contact with any ex as there are breakups and divorces. So I totally get that. But there were no valid reasons to sever communication with someone who was raising her children going by all the information she provided. I told her that I had made peace with myself and peace with my ex long time ago. Having an acceptable environment for my children, which would include a relationship with their father, had higher priorities to me than holding onto any sort of resentments.

I find it rather intriguing that people are unable to move beyond their stories that they helped create. And hang onto hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and crushed egos instead of moving on to a life that has the capacity to be at peace. With oneself foremost. People choose to create and store memories that are memories best, not forgotten, but forgiven. Only in your forgiveness to yourself and others will you create those memories worth of existing. Memory ( and your experiences) is not in your mind, but in your soul, and that will be the only thing you will carry with you after crossing over.