Don't Forget

I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but my experience of life is a constant forgetting and remembering. Some part of us knows exactly what we need at all times, but through inattention, laziness, getting brainwashed by some powerful figure or swept along in mainstream culture’s amnesia, we forget. And then if we’re lucky, we remember again.

Same thing with my teaching. When I teach workshops to adults and pass on some essential information about what makes teaching memorable, flowing, in the groove, life-giving, fun, I tell them that I’m mostly reminding myself what’s needed when I get off track. And as stated above, we seem to have a propensity for constantly leaving the rails.

This came to mind playing Rummy 500 with my wife last night. There’s the first remembering. Play some games! The two of us haven’t played cards together for some 30 years or so, but with all this time together in the house, why not? 

And then we put on some music and there was Astrud Gilberto singing some lovely Bossa Nova and there was another reminder. I have over a thousand CD’s and another thousand records in the basement. Why not listen to them? Remember those simpler (well, at least different) times when that song was the soundtrack of that era in my long life. So yes, I’ve been playing piano a lot, but why not remember the gift of recorded music?

Then I had our now ritual 6-feet-apart-in-her-backyard lunch with my daughter Talia and besides the pleasure of remembering to play paddleball, we actually started joking with each other and making each other laugh. Ah yes, laughter. That’s worth remembering.

So in this time of sheltering, remembering what’s really important—card games, laughter, music, paddleball—will help see us through. And hopefully stay by our side when we finally walk out of the house into the new future that awaits.

What pleasures do you need to remember? Treat yourself!