Life Editing

I have begun to edit and sort the many photos I took while in England in early June. It's probably good that I didn't have much time right after my return; now that three weeks have passed, I see the photos from a greater distance, emotionally as well as chronologically. By the time I organize them into an album or scrapbook, I will be able to leave out more of them. Some, of course, I will choose to display because they remind me of a certain meal or a particular spot on the trail. But not every photo will be necessary to the preservation of events I deem important.

The emotional intensity attached to these pictures diminishes as time passes, and so all those shots of birds and flowers and tombstones--taken greedily in the thrall of a blissful experience--will not seem so crucial. I can put those photos in an envelope and store them with the album, but I will not need them to tell the story or even to relive the moment.

Some photos take years to discard. Twenty-five years after I had lived in Jordan (for only three years), finally I could get rid of poorly taken slides and photos. I had been so reluctant to let go of a single remnant of a single memory. But looking at the blurry lines, the too-light or too-dark images or simply the uninteresting ones, I had to admit that some memories don't merit special attention.

Do I clear out my memory banks just as carefully as I sort piles of photographs? I do believe that I have clung to some shreds of experience and emotion that should have been tossed aside long ago. Some moments do not bear repeating; others may have been profound at the time but lent little in the way of enduring wisdom.

How many faded, badly cropped memories does a person really need? How much space do they occupy in a heart already full of today's conversations and discernments? And do I honestly think I can change a memory by revisiting it again and again, holding it at a different angle maybe?

This is an aspect of soul housekeeping I've not considered before. That's rather sad; at my age, you'd think I'd have developed better habits of interior order and cleanliness. Oh well. Better late than not at all.