The roller coaster of my life continues apace - lots of Buffs!!! this week as things have hit me - lots of moments when I felt magnificent and lots when I felt quite lonely.
The death of a man of my childhood Ewart Dawson, has made me think a lot about the past - funnily enough building on long conversations that Gilly and I had last Sunday - doing what we like doing best - eating Gilly tailored food and drinking wine!
We were talking about how the past is seen from the present - and she said that how an event in the past is seen so differently by people who were both there at the same thing!
I've thought about this a lot this week and how people's experiences of the same time are so very different - depending on who they are at that time - where they are in their lives - how they feel - what has happened to them in the recent past - so many, many small factors as well as big things - which make up who we are at any moment experiencing that specific day - and so although two people may have been at the same 'event' their experience of it is totally differently - this is then compounded by how they remember it in the future and the 'story' that they and others build around it.
This also resonated with conversations I had when in India about how your understanding of where you are now - changes how you see and reflect on the past. So your childhood is not seen through the eyes of the child as that child no longer exist. We see our past from the present through layers of past experiences and stories and - and it's a big AND - and we can choose to change how we see the past.
So with these two streams running through me - I thought about the presence of a man in my childhood - and I enjoyed these reflections - and today I will go and talk to his widow which is making me very happy - which seems very right.
