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Since childhood, I have been a pretty serious little person. I can look at a gum wrapper (this honestly happened when I was younger) and cry about its significance. Granted, there are things in life that are serious, and they should be treated with respect. This concept is not often grasped in today's "meme culture" where everything disintegrates. Both a lack and a surplus of significance can make a person miserable because the emotion becomes unstable and artificial. Things must be what they are. There must be truth. 

To say that nothing matters means that we are attributing meaningless to things that DO have meaning. Love, life, and existence all have meaning. There are solid answers for life, despite what popular philosophy would tell us. To say that certain things, objects, and events matter simply because we wish them to is attributing significance to something that may in truth be meaningless or at least not as meaningful as we would like. 

As someone who likes to hold onto things, objects, ideas, songs, emotions, memories, and people, I have to be very careful that I am not carrying around "stuff" that really isn't all that important. The main thing that is important in my life is my relationship with God, not my relationship with stuff or even people that I deeply love. If I am trusting in God and allowing him to show me what is important, my hands are far more free to move and do the work I am meant to do instead of running around, clutching things out of my perception of their importance. When I push away things that truly are significant, my hands are empty and I am not working with the tools I need to finish my tasks. 

My goal for this month is to stop attributing too much seriousness to things in my life that are not life and death. I want to practice letting go, leaving things behind, and pressing onward in the truly important things in life. 

I am currently enjoying my last semester of college, and loving every helter-skelter minute of it. While listening to some poetry by Emily Dickinson in one of my morning classes, I was struck by the idea for this poem about memory. 

Writers are, I think, in many ways slaves to their memories. I have had a "memory hoarding" issue since I was quite young, and found solace in writing things down. When your memory is very good like mine, it's easy to go back in time and even want to stay there longer than you should. 

However, a good memory when used properly is a wonderful tool that lets you stand outside of time and space to help others see what they have forgotten about the world, or even themselves. This poem is both a sadness and a celebration of the gift of memory. 

Time does not go on for me

Forever I am crossed at sea. 

Forever tossed 

On still-same wave--

Forever here to start again. 

I look into that face of yours, 

And all I see are open doors, 

Open doors within your eyes

Forever walking into mine. 

Time makes strangers

Of loves and dangers. 

But not of me, 

It cannot be. 

Forever in my wintered mind, 

These thoughts preserved for all of time. 

I look around myself and say

"I can recall like yesterday..." 

Yet no one else remains here thus--

My memory stays, theirs fades to dust. 

So all their ships go sailing by, 

But on my boat, there is no time. 

Photo credit via - https://cverwaal.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/on-frozen-pond/