This weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and it was filled with so many things I love. We celebrated my daughter’s birthday, spent time with friends and family, and hosted a BBQ. There was a parade, meals on the porch, swimming, and lots of time outside. There was this one, beautiful moment where the sun was shining and I was watching my kids playing and laughing in the pool, and it felt straight up magical.
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This weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and it was kind of a bummer. I got sick and was coughing and congested all weekend. I had a high fever on Sunday night, so I ended up being quarantined from a party I was hosting, so that I didn’t infect anyone else. It was hot and we lost power for a few hours. My kids bickered and fought way too much.
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Both of those statements are one hundred percent true. Several people have asked me how my holiday weekend was, and it’s hard for me to know how to answer. It was really good and also really disappointing. There were beautiful moments, but also some lousy parts.
There was a time in my life when I would have only described this weekend as a bummer. I have this tendency to let a bad moment or bad event color and pollute a whole experience. I can remember one time I declared it a bad day at 6:15 a.m. It’s easy to let one bad thing ruin the whole thing.
Our brains are actually wired to work this way. We were designed so that bad events and experiences stick and linger in our brains. This is really functional when we face dangerous situations. If we touch a fire and get burned, we are going to remember the one time we touched the fire with more clarity and detail than any of the other hundreds of times we saw fire and didn’t touch it. This memory will keep us from making that same dangerous choice again.
We are wired to remember things that are painful, hard, or scary. They immediately stick in our brains and stay there. This helps us care for ourselves and protect ourselves well.
We have to work a lot harder to get the positive experiences and events to stick in our brains, particularly if they are every day, run of the mill positive events and experiences.
The negative experiences stand out in our memories in a powerful way. It’s only natural that we would therefore let these experiences color and cloud our memories and dominate our emotional experiences.
Even though this is perfectly natural, and even functional, it isn’t always helpful for our emotional health. It’s the same principle that leads to us remembering the one criticism and forgetting the fifty compliments. If we aren’t intentional, we can lose so much of the good in our lives, because the hard or scary or painful overshadow it.
It takes practice and intentionality to get to a place where we can recognize the good and the bad, and honor all of our experiences. It takes work to cling to and value the good, while also acknowledging and honoring the hard and unpleasant. We don’t need to minimize or dismiss either; we can hold space for both.
What does this look like practically?
First, it means giving both space in our thoughts. We need to pay attention to both and recognize that the good will require more repetition if we want to remember it. For example, I knew that I wanted to remember the moment with my children playing in the kiddie pool in the yard. Later, when I was doing dishes, I replayed the memory. Then, when I was going to bed, I revisited it again. I am writing about it now. Each of these repetitions helps cement the positive memories in my mind. We need to rehearse the things we want to remember.
Second, we need to give both space in our conversations. It wouldn’t be honest to just say it was a great weekend and talk only about the fun, easy parts. It also wouldn’t be accurate to only talk about being sick and missing out on things. We need to recognize and honor both.
And finally, we need to grow in the practice of holding contradictions. Things can be hard and good. We can be happy and sad. At the same time. A day can be good and hard and too long and too short, all at once. As we become comfortable with the contradictions in our emotions and experiences, we learn to hold space for all of our selves.
So, how was my Memorial Day weekend? It was good and disappointing and fun and exhausting. I was sick, and that was bummer. The weather was beautiful and we had good time with friends and family. It’s not a simple answer, but it’s a good answer.