I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou (RIP-5/28/14) Actions and words are more easily forgotten than feelings, or the feelings that are elicited by those words and actions. Feelings live in the body at a cellular level and have their own kind of memory. We may over time forget the content of conversations or activities with others (or of their actions), but we retain a deep and almost instinctual memory of how they made us feel.
When we think of someone, we may literally feel warm, open or relaxed or closed, cold and tense. We may literally "light up" when recalling someone who has loved us or been special to us, and conversely a dark cloud may come over us as we recall someone who has hurt us. These visceral feelings are our bodies' way of keeping our experiences alive, of orienting us toward or away from others. Long after many memories have faded, the feeling we had with that person remains alive and accessible. And of course, this is also true of how we are remembered. What really counts, what endures over decades, is how we made someone feel. That is what really matters!
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I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company -Rachel Naomi Remen So much of life is a mystery, no matter how much we try to understand life in general and our lives in particular. Yet it seems to be part of being human to want to understand, to look for answers, to not be content or satisfied with not understanding or knowing.
Although many things can eventually be understood (often in hindsight) there will always be more questions that are unanswerable. They may be questions about the nature of the Universe, the purpose and significance of life, questions about the Soul or spirituality, or questions about our psychology or personalities. Many of us may wonder why so many horrible things happen throughout the world each and every day. And although scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, neuropsychologists, cosmologists, astronomers, sociologists and many others are constantly making new discoveries and making sense of things that before were not clear, there will always be Mystery. Rather than fret that some things don't have answers, or don't have answers for now, or worrying about that which we don't understand, maybe we can take a new approach as the quote above so eloquently states. Rather than make our goal answering all the questions that occur to us, the things that we question or wonder about, maybe we can instead enjoy the process of sharing these questions, wondering together about the great mysteries of Life. Maybe the process of thinking together, of sharing laughter, wonder, joy, pain and sadness as we contemplate the unanswerable questions, is truly a key to living well. |
AuthorPeggy Handler, MFT, is a psychotherapist in San Francisco's Noe Valley Archives
December 2020
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