Things Forgotten

Do not trust your memory; it is a net full of holes; the most beautiful prizes slip through it.
Georges Duhamel

I made this hooded caplet and I used it a lot last winter.  It is perfect for keeping the wind out and adding a layer of warmth.

This winter I found this.  Something had broken quite a few yarn strands and there was even a hole...I think a cat tried to eat it...not sure why.

I tried to fix it and ended up with this since the yarns kept on breaking.  While no one will probably even notice that the rows no longer line up; I do.  This means I need to undo everything I did to fix it and rip back a row in each direction to clean out the broken ends that I duplicate stitched.

Unfortunately, the damage was more extensive, the ends kept on breaking and I had to rip it out.  There was no saving the cowl.  I was able to save most of the yarn.  So when I knit something new with the yarn will it remember being a cowl?  Will it hold the spirit of all the warmth it gave me?  Will it mean more to me since the yarn is full of happy memories tinged with the loss of the cowl?

This got me thinking about memories and how we perceive them.  Often it is our point of view that determines how a memory is experienced by us.  A small child will remember an event differently than an adult.  If you were happy during the course of the memory you might remember the favorable parts of the event and forget any unpleasant ones.

I was often surprised when my parents told me of an event I remembered so clearly in a different way then I thought it happened.  Yet, they could have been the ones who had changed the story of the event in their minds.  The truth is really just your point of view at times even if everyone sees that differently.

One of the Reiki symbols can be used to change how you perceive an event.  You cannot change the past but you can change how you react to it.  You can take a painful memory and like the hole in my caplet, slowly rebuild it layer by layer.

People have strong beliefs that are challenged by others or new ideas and they change how they perceive things based on new information.  Changing a memory is really no different.

Another thing you can do it is to take away an emotional attachment to a certain memory or trigger.  Say you hate rain and every time it rains you get mad.  This anger serves no real purpose.  Maybe it is rooted in the fact that you slipped and fell on the championship game and let your team down.  You've let that one moment in time warp rain into a negative being almost.  Because you have this attachment to rain every time it starts to drizzle things will go bad for you.  This will only add fuel to a long-standing fire and cement the anger that begins to build when it rains.

If you could go back into that memory of falling at the big game and change it to something more positive then rain would just be rain again.  Not good or bad, just rain.  There would be no emotional attachment to it anymore.

Instead of focusing on failing everyone maybe you could remember how hard you did try.  You could remember that everyone slipped in the mud a bit that day and it had been a challenging time but you had done your best.  You could remember your coach telling you that it was okay because you had really grown over the year as a player.  The other team members chimed in about various plays you were a part of and how important you were to their team.

It might take a while to start to believe in your new story but as you do you will release those negative feelings towards rainy days and that you failed your team.  Maybe the following year you helped win the championship game and that fact had been lost in all that negativity that you had been wallowing in.  Now when you look at the trophy on your wall you will remember the friends and teammates, the fun and the hard work but you won’t be focused on the game you lost anymore.

So, no one will ever know the story of my cowl or whatever the yarn turns into this time and how it had a death experience from looking at it.  But I know...does that knowing change how I feel about it?  In truth, the hole, the mending, will all be forgotten as it continues on as a new project a new item with new stories to tell.

I feel this lesson that this cowl has taught me is an important one.  I've been asked to write up the pattern by a bunch of people.  I take notes for everything I make so I can create them again.  It is going into my enormous queue...but it will not be forgotten  :)

Speaking of forgetting things.  Memorizing lists has been shown in many cases to reconnect brain function.  So, working on a pattern with a bunch of repeats that you memorize is actually helping your brain get a good work out and keeping those pathways flowing.  Yet another benefit to knitting!

Happy crafting,

Ruinwen

:)