"We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice."
- Stephen Covey
Waking up in the morning can be a really grueling thing to do sometimes. You open your eyes at almost the same time as you do every day; its a routine to you now after doing it since the day you were born. Plus you have this mysterious biological clock inside you that all these womens magazine keeps talking about in their every other article. Your whole body feels heavy after the nice rest it has had all night, and now is gearing up for another busy day ahead. Some days you wake up abruptly from a nice dream and you try hard to recall what the whole thing was about, but you find it hard to do. Some days you wake up thinking about the same things you were thinking of when you went off to sleep, mostly some romantic tryst with someone special to you. People might spend their whole day gossiping and throwing hatred at everybody around them, but they always end up thinking of loved ones before dozing off. Somebody from both past or present, or even someone they wish to have in their lives in the near future.
Reminiscing in such thoughts is such a wonderful feeling in the first few waking minutes. Not always though. Some days you wake up to something not so pleasant. You have a lousy dream. Or even someone around you talking to somebody else and tidbits of their conversation leads you to recall some part of your past that you really are trying very hard to block out and keep trying desperately not think of. But now after listening to these conversations it is inside your head, and there is no escaping it. You end up thinking about these unpleasant moments in your life of which you’re too proud of, your utmost low point. Now you have no choice but to spend those first few glorious lazy minutes of the day stuck in your not-so-glorious past. That is so not the way anybody wants to start off their day.
Human beings are the most blessed, and probably the most cursed, one of nature’s children. And the reason for both is the same, the strength of our minds or rather more specifically our ability to remember and feel. A stray dog might not recognize the kind old lady that had given it some bread to eat when it was hungry last winter and will run away from her when she comes to pet it a few months later, but it will always remember to pee in the self same spots without fail like clockwork to mark his territory. Thats mostly due to its brain is hard-wired to sticking to a routine, than to remembering any seemingly non-consequential data about some withered old member of another species. Sometimes I feel they are so lucky. They do not have to remember anything from the past or deal with the emotions created as a consequence of remembering them. They don’t have to feel guilt, shame, anger, frustration, angst or sorrow. All they really need to worry about in life are the three basics for their existence – food to exist, shelter their hide from the harsh weathers and sniffing each others’s butts.
We on the other hand are not that fortunate. We remember. Each of our actions, reactions, feelings etc is all locked away in the seemingly endless recesses of memory space inside our head. And our memories are capable of bringing out a wide array emotions like joy, sorrow, content, angst, anger, peace, guilt or just the plain old dreadful nagging feeling called regret. All these feelings can be dealt with; once you’ve spent it all out of your system, it is over and done. You just need someone to blame it all on. The people around you, the cat, the dog, and the stupid lazy lady down the street, or the all time favorite, the government. Most of them just need a little venting off, and time. Then poof, it’s gone.
