Memories....

I just saw on the news tonight about how scientists are working with rats to eliminate memories from people. The news piece started this way: "Wouldn't it be nice if your worst memories or traumatic events in your life could be erased from your memory...?"

At first I thought, "I have a QUITE a FEW memories I'd like to erase!" But then, just as quickly, thought, "No -- all memories, good or bad, are ulimately beneficial for you... but why?!"

I just got back from a trip to the hospital. I stayed overnight. I felt I was having a heart attack; my blood pressure was through the roof, I had shortness of breath, pain, dizziness, and that icy cold feeling across my chest. When I showed up at the hospital, I did actually have very high blood pressure, so it was good that I went in. It turns out that it was a mixture of high cholesterol, a newly-discovered of an irregular heartbeat and a panic attack.

I have lived through a lot of pain. A LOT of hurt in my life. But even memories of painful experiences are good for a person. Wait a minute,,, this is coming from a person who has been experiencing panic attacks since October 14?! Yes.

Pain helps us to avoid dangerous circumstances, and to prevent us from repeating stupid mistakes. A child who touches an electrical socket will not be so prone to blindly do it again -- possibly to his or her demise -- if that child remembers what it felt like to have that horrendous charge go through its little body.

Pain helps us to get on the right track. It hurt when that needle pricked my arm to take blood out of me. I got a headache when I took those nitro pills. But, even though the hospital staff was wonderful to me, I don't want to go back there anytime soon with something worse. I know that to not relive that memory, I have to start to eat right, and exercise.

Pain helps to alert of something wrong. If I hadn't felt that pain in my chest, which moved to my back and then to my neck, I would not have known that there was a possible problem with me. If I should, heaven forbid, I would forget, and have those pains again, I may not think to remember what was told of me by the physicians, and I could eventually die.

The same can be said of painful memories. God allows us to have painful memories to: help us to avoid dangerous circumstances, and to prevent us from repeating the same stupid mistakes; to get us on the right track; and, help alert us of something wrong.

In the study of the rats, it was found that when the memories were taken from them, those rats headed directly to a wire which emitted an electrical shock that they formerly (and wisely) avoided.

Painful memories are hard to deal with ... so very hard... but it's so much harder to NOT deal with them. People who learn from their bad memories actually become more productive members of society. You grow from learnt lessons, no matter what the cost, so I'll take the memories,,, good and bad,,, and try to form a beautiful patch quilt of life with them, and hopefully make someone elses' life a little better.