Remembering

I’m reading Mary E. DeMuth’s novel “Watching the Tree Limbs“.  I highly recommend it, as well as her blog.  Anyway, this quote jumped out at me and I thought I’d share.

“Half our problems in life come from forgetting.  You need to remember.  Spend enough time in the past and you’ll be able to live happy in the present.  That’s the secret to life.”

I have to agree.  For myself, remembering where I came from brings joy to the present.  My life is like two photographs, held side by side.  One is flawed and in need of editing.  It needs to be cropped.  Not so that I can forget.  Just so I can move on.  The other is cropped and edited, ready to be presented, but far from perfect.  A photographer always has room for improvement.  As I look at the cropped picture beside the uncropped, I am able to remember where I came from and it makes the new picture so much more valuable to me.