First memories - Do they set a tone for how we engage in life?
Do you remember your first memory?
My grandma has mine on a VHS tape that I've yet to live down. It's a video of me yelling at the top of my lungs that we were all trapped in a jail and didn’t realize it. I was about 4 years old living with her at the time and I had this crazy notion that I should be able to go down to the park to play. When she told me I couldn’t I started to panic and screamed that this was a jail, how could we not enjoy ourselves when we wanted?
Everyone says I was always a serious child. If my memory serves me though, every time I wanted to play I was given reasons why I couldn’t, why it wasn’t a good time.
I think in a way this set the tone for how much I engaged later in life.
I felt so limited in this reality, I just wanted to run around and play but every chance I tried it seemed like I hit a wall.
It wasn’t long before I stopped trying to play, stopped trying to open doors, I thought if it wasn’t open then I wasn’t meant to go through it.
Recently I've realized that by doing this I put myself in a box, I made my own jail cell and I didn’t even realize it.
I spent most of middle school and high school trying to figure out ways to escape my reality, to disassociate from the world I was in and plug into the reality I wanted. My complacency for my physical reality was real.
My mom had a knack for uprooting us every year and a half or so. I got so used to being told when, how, and why to do things that I just felt my opinion on things didn’t matter.
After some luckily failed suicide attempts I felt like I had something to do here, but since I felt like my choices in life were irrelevant I didn’t know how to embark on that.
I sunk into a deep depression in college that made me realize my coping mechanisms were no longer working.
I needed to figure out how to merge my fantasy with my reality. I needed to know that my waking moments meant something. This is when I started getting into my manifestation work, started delving into the magic I had always aligned with in my books and decided that I too could impact my reality.
I began being a lot more intentional with everything in my life. I saw every moment as a chance to make a choice, reinvent and redesign myself and my reality. I didn’t know what any of it was adding up to but I knew that if everyone else could leave a mark on the world and in my life then I could too.
This turned out a lot longer than I expected. However, I really wanted to show how such a small memory, can create a pathway for us that makes it so easy to go down a rabbit hole we never even realized we were going down.
I'm in the process of reprogramming and rewilding my experiences.
Going through my memories and realizing a lot of the assumptions I made from them no longer serve me.
What was your first memory like? Have you noticed if it impacted your personality or the way you interact with others in any way?
@subtlemagic your words resonate with me in numerous ways, and I thank you for sharing them! I am lucky enough to have a multitude of memories from when I was about three-maybe even two years old. I know exactly what you mean by saying you made "assumptions" about your earliest memories that upon further consideration don't exactly line up with reality. For years I swore I had the clearest memory of being locked in the bathroom by my grandfather. It wasn't until I actually thought about it as an adult that I realized I was actually the one who decided to lock myself in in the midst of a tantrum....teehee... I too was quite a serious child. Perhaps even a bit too serious for my own good. I remember getting in trouble with with teacher when I was in either preschool or kindergarten because I would yell at kids who made a mess of the blocks and did not pick up after themselves. I had not thought of any of this in many years and appreciate the reminder and smiles your post has inspired. I could comment even more about the "subtle magic" of life and conscious manifestation, but I'll save all that for a less drawn out comment. Thanks again;0)
Aww thanks so much for sharing! I love how uniquely quirky we all tend to be. It's nice to think of past memories and see how our perspective on things shifts. Is your seriousness something you've carried on as an adult?
That seriousness is definitely something that has defined many aspects of my life as an adult. However, somewhere along the way I've acknowledged that although I am fully committed to giving my very best at every turn life offers, all is well. Knowing that throughout hardships it is far more beneficial to maintain perspective than to worry about a perfect outcome provides me with great guidance...and therefore peace. Not to say I have fully mastered being centered, however I do try to remind myself daily that everything is always working out for us!....Often in more fantastic and delicious ways than we could fathom at that point in time;0)
Hello, thanks for the message, relive beautiful moments, I remember when I was 4 years old, I was in the preschool and I painted a drawing on the wall to change the facade, you made a little boat and blew all my life but I was happy because my little boat was in the wall of my schooi
Its so nice when we're able to see the impact we're making right away! Such beautiful feedback of our actions and reality, it allows us to see how if the way we're directing our energy is truly serving us and our community.