Sometimes a memory will come flooding back to me, whole, detailed, out of nowhere. A fragrance on the breeze, or a song on the radio, or something my kids say as they look up at me, and wham, I’m transported back to a moment I haven’t thought about in years. Sometimes the feeling around the memory is sweet, and sometimes it’s painful, but either way I’m amazed by the experience. Where was I storing that, or has it been continuing on in some parallel universe this whole time? That me that stood on that corner that afternoon, walking one way when I could have walked another. Is part of me still on that corner? Is part of me still having that first kiss, with the sun flooding in through the window, and the shock of realizing that kissing means lips and tongues and a racing heart?

The mind is an amazing thing. What we remember is simply our version of events, the way we experienced the world or another person through our own filter. Did you ever leave a film with a friend feeling one way about it only to find your companion has a completely different opinion? We tell our “life story” to ourselves and sometimes to other people, but it’s just that, it’s just a story; it’s the way we’ve received what we’ve been through. I’m not disputing facts. You were born on a certain day, and this thing may have happened, or this other thing may have happened. People came or they went, they showed up for you or they let you down. Whatever happened, happened, but we choose the things that are the highlights. We grab onto those moments that stand out for us as significant, and we give them weight and life and energy. We weave them into the tale of this is who I am, and why I am the way I am. Sometimes the story weighs us down or closes us off or prevents us from discovering our potential for love or joy or freedom or happiness.

Sometimes people hold on to the wrong pieces. Sometimes a person decides the painful pieces are the ones to highlight. The wrongs are brought to the forefront and held up and fed and magnified until the person is feeling what they felt then. Until the past is fully present in the present, and is very likely to screw up the future, too. We are all human. There have been times I’ve met people and I thought they were more than human, only to find that no, everyone who looks like a human is human. So there’s that. People who look human and think they’re floating above the surface of the earth are the ones to watch out for because that’s a distorted perception. Everyone makes mistakes. No one operates from her highest self in every moment. You will hurt people unintentionally, simply because human beings are complex and always evolving, and how you feel at one time may not grow or expand; you may think you want one thing and realize you want something else. You will almost certainly say and do and think things you’ll wish you hadn’t at some point.

If you can accept that about yourself, then you’ll be able to accept it in other people. If you believe you never make mistakes, and if a person is upset with you it’s due to their own negativity and not attributable to anything you could have done, then you’ll probably be very unforgiving and also very lonely. If you expect perfection from yourself, you’ll expect it in others as well and you’ll be disappointed all the way around, or you’ll be deluded. I know people who believe they’re always right. It’s such a sad stance. It’s a sure way to avoid intimacy and true friendship. If you can’t own your humanness and figure out how to say the words, “I’m sorry, I blew it” and mean it, and look at what happened so you can do it differently next time, if you can’t embrace your vulnerability and your culpability and your capacity to screw things up, you’ll also never discover your capacity to love. The two go hand in hand.

I know too many people who waste too much time holding on to anger, to grudges, to ways they’ve been wronged. It’s a cancer to do that, it eats away at you and life is too short and too precious, and there’s so much love that could be happening. Family members stop speaking to one another over the craziest, most meaningless stuff. Money. Something someone said twelve years ago at a wedding, drunk and full of salmon. How much time do you think you have, and how much of it do you want to spend digging your heels in being “right”? Do you want to be right and alone? Right and missing moments you can’t ever have back again? There are no winners in a fight between friends or family. There’s just pain. Pick better moments to feed. If a person has been nothing but abusive, they can’t be in your life, so I’m not talking about that. But if you have a loved one, and their worst crime is that they’ve been human, let the anger go. Love feels a lot better.

Sending you some right now,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here, and my yoga classes and courses here.