I’ve been going though old blog posts recently and thinking a lot about the little pieces that make up our lives. Then, today, there was a guest minister at our UU church who spoke about this same thing: the importance of looking back on the past, remembering the intense happiness but also the tragedy and sorrow that are part of the human experience, and learning from those past experiences as we shape our futures.
I photographed this window on Nantucket in June of 2012. In that month, we were basking in the secret of expecting baby number two, enjoying the company of friends and visitors, loving our little island life, and blissfully unaware of the major changes to come later that same year.
It’s easy to want to keep only the good memories and to wish away the bad, but like the panes in this window, each piece, big or small, is necessary to make us complete. We are the sum of our experiences.
I think one of the greatest gifts I’ve given myself is the record of moments – good and bad – that is my blog. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what to do with it.
