We can sometimes compare our lives with things stored in our personal boxes of memories. It can be a box filled with delicious chocolates or a box full of blazed nails. Whatever you may find in that box ultimately deciphers one's character, else a way of life. We may also be able to unravel whether the person has lived a fulfilled life or has led it somewhere else. However, if the box is full, it does not instantly mean a good life. It depends on what has filled up the box all this time.
There are some things we may have stored away in that box which may have turned our lives around if we hadn't been too careful or too wise. On another note, there are stuff in there which we couldn't give ourselves even the slightest enlightenment as to why they have made their way into that box in the first place. Like the indecisions and wrong turns we have taken, or the friendships and relationships we were not supposed to have.
I do want to add something which may well be a common connotation to us all. In most cases, the things we find stored in our boxes of memories are things we had longed to already forget because of the unending pains they entail; things that are not meant for us, but we could not let go of because of their utmost value to us; things that we have stolen; things that have no meaning at all! The way these things are found inside the box, whether arranged, cluttered or otherwise, determine the type of weather a life had in season.
I dreamt a dream the other night, and in that dream I was surrounded by a lot of different men. Some of them were older, some were just about my age, others yet were younger. Each of them had a box in hand and I asked them to pile them up while I dug a grave. I was the only one digging while these men just stood in wait. But I awoke before the boxes were buried.
When I recounted that to Mae, she said that probably it meant I should already have to let go completely of all my long gone love stories good or bad. So, why did I start an entry on the love month with nonsense on memories in a box? Because a rather huge part of my memoir in my box, along with my collection of a happy childhood, consisted of bitter-sweet romances which at thirty makes me wonder why I am still single.
Some couple of weeks back, I sent an I.M. to a very good friend of mine in Italy:
"Leah, I just finished reading By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. I could not stop to gape at the thought of how Coelho was able to craft both our love stories in one. However so, we both did not get our desired endings. It was that love story that we did not allow to happen because we chose to be right..."
Leah laughed after her delayed reply to my I.M. came in offline. Because she forgot the beautiful ending to that stunningly poetic novel.
We forget things...it is bound to happen, but it doesn't mean they never happened. What happened in the past do not have to stay in the past, if it can be a part of our present to shape it. That is why there is the purpose of boxes to shelter great quantities of memories as a basis for the next life to be better...to be stored in the next box which may be filled with better contents in a much more desired arrangement and a better story line...
The point is: LIFE IS ONE BIG BOX WAITING TO BE FILLED WITH WHATEVER YOU WOULD HAVE IN IT.
The point is: YOU HAVE LIVED...and LOVED!
02.14.10
© Theren Alexander 2010
3 comments:
I would like to give you a gift of one huge box filled with chocolates to replace your sorows and struggles. Good read, Theren. Keep it up!
-Mark-
A box of black and blue pens for you, Ate. Continue writing! I am excited for your short story. Pabasa ha? Tama ka. Just spend your time creating beautiful stories. That is a better way to live. Stop crying na ha? Love you, Ate =)
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