Choosing to remember

Boulder Falls area in Boulder, Colorado.
Photo, as always, is click-on-able for the full size.
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July 25, 2014
          Day 86

We cannot escape the uncomfortable, annoying, or downright miserable moments of our lives.  We can't wipe them away, or even rewind time to handle things differently.  But we can always choose what to remember about our past.

On vacation to Colorado and Wyoming this past week, Andy and I filled up more large parts of our brains with new happy memories we will treasure forever.  We experienced so much in 5 short days in the area, and we loved just about every minute of our trip.  We took tons of photos and some videos, and we mostly just basked in the joy of vacation.

Those are memories we choose to hold on to, choose to treasure, choose to remember forever.  We could choose to focus on dragging luggage through the airport, or how miserable our seat mate on the plane ride back seemed to be.  I could choose to focus on how exhausted I was coming into work the past two days, or how difficult it is getting back to a normal schedule.  It'd be easy for me, for us, to call on any number of little miseries in the past week, or from any time in the past.  But instead, we choose to remember the happy times instead.

We choose to take photos of the happy times, not the sad.

We choose to tell friends and family about happy stories from our trips, not bad stories.

We choose to focus on so much that is good, instead of so much that could have been better.

We choose, we choose, we choose.  Our choices are important, because they set the tone for our whole world, our entire emotional universe.  We choose to remember the good times, because those are the memories that sustain us and inspire us, that keep us smiling, keep us happy, keep us ready to take on new adventures in the future.

Our choice for happiness is a simple one.  Misery will follow us everywhere, especially if we keep inviting it to come along.  But joy is there for most of us at many more turns in the road than we realize.  We choose which memories to hold onto, so we may as well choose to remember the joy.