I had a conversation with a friend recently about the importance of memories. He asked me if I had money to spend on two holidays – one where I would be guaranteed to have a great time and enjoy every single minute while I was there, but would have absolutely no memory of it afterwards, and the other where there were no guarantees that I would enjoy it, but I would be able to remember everything, how would I split the money. I would be inclined to spend more on the holiday I would have memories of and much less on the holiday I wouldn’t remember.
Part of the enjoyment of special occasions or holidays or happy times for me is the happy memories. These stay with us long after the occasion has passed.
One of my friends bought me a Happy Memories box for my birthday. I love the idea of this. It’s kind of an extension of my gratitude journal which I kept for over a year as part of my quest to become more resilient. After some time I only wrote in my gratitude journal sporadically. At the start of this year, I decided I needed to work on my resilience again – after a particularly challenging year – so I’ve started writing in my gratitude journal every day since early January.
Like before, at the end of each day I write down things I am grateful for that day. Sometimes it’s a long list, sometimes it’s really short. It’s nearly always tiny and barely legible as one of my Parkinson’s symptoms is difficulty writing – as well as smaller writing. But I am determined to keep doing this daily. I believe it helps me to be more positive and resilient. Both of which are so important when living with Parkinson’s and dealing with the everyday challenges of life. I think it’s essential for me to try and focus on the positives – things I am grateful for, because if I focused on the negatives, some days I could quite easily give up. Which isn’t something I want to do.
I guess my gratitude journal, memory box and even my blogs could be described as my ‘time capsule’ – capturing moments in my life with Parkinson’s. In a previous blog, I used a analogy of ‘chasing bubbles‘ to describe capturing precious moments in time, and the fact that bubbles eventually burst to describe the time-limited effect of my medication. This leads me on to part 2 of this blog which is about medication and includes a poem. Click here for Time Capsules part 2.
Living with Parkinson's 