Illuminatus

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the

guillotine" - Milan Kundera

If it's possible to review your own life, to watch it in a dark a theater, alone, on a wide screen, pop-corn in hand, on a cozy armchair, would you- I'm not going to ask whether or not you'll watch it until the end, rest assured, as that is impossible- but would you have the same feeling about certain moments in your life, now you are witnessing them again ?

Mishaps, being punished for something you didn't do as a child, your first shock in humanity ; when you realized how brutal this world can be, your first big lie, Teenage crises , the conflict between right and wrong with you stuck in between, your first F in a test , the first real dispute with your parents, your first fight with a friend/lover, the departure of a close person from this life, being strangers with a once close friend..etc

There are so many events that can be condensed into one life-time, so many you won't remember all of them; but you will always remember how they made you feel . Because feelings are dormant sensations that awaken once in a while, with a scent, a touch, a picture, a color...feelings could be entrapped and left for keepsake inside any object of our choice, they sense the proximity of the object and resolutely bounce into our minds...remember...remember...REMEMBER..

When I watch the movie of my life, a frequent occurrence during which I enter a state of deep reverie I don't easily get out of, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling all the way. I would laugh at my stupid adventures and the silly fights I had, all the foolish decisions I've made so far, the things I lost and I thought I'd never find, the tests I didn't study for and consequently failed, how being around a certain individual who's around no more made me feel, instead of how their absence crushed me. And all the mistakes I've made...the things that I considered as calamities at the time...they would all look so logical to me, so educating, and so luminous.

It's very interesting that memories, whether sad or happy, have a peculiar charm; they look very luminous from afar, and misty, untouchable when you walk through them during moments of reminiscing.

When we remember, dwell in the past, it's always nostalgia that possess us. Ardent nostalgia ; instead of grieving  and morning over the lost youth, and the people who are no longer here. Instead, we talk about the deceased with evident festivity, and the days of our childhood with joy.

But what is it that transfigures memories so much as to change the impressions they leave at the back of our minds ? what makes them so...brilliant ? We often lose memories, or make up memories, consciously or unconsciously, we develop them, add to them parts that were never there, trim some of the painful parts, make them more radiant,
But never gloomier.

Of course, if one had so much control over their memories - and believe me, we ,you and I,do- why would they distort them ? No one, absolutely no one, seeks unhappiness so much as to mutate their past into horrid nightmares. We never exaggerate our mistakes, they all look smaller and sillier the older we get, because we already lived with the consequences, and because we already know how bad it can get, and that it can't get any worse . So instead, we get our pallets and brushes, and set to color the past with the most delightful and refreshing colors. After all, our past is a precious part of our own, to beautify the past is to beautify ourselves in our own eyes.