Wonder Woman: The Inspiration of Memory

All over the world rivers have been guided away from their natural
courses in order to make dwelling space for people. Inevitably, after a short
time or a long time, the river will make its way back to where it was. "They
call it flooding," says writer Toni Morrison, "but the river is not flooding –
it’s remembering."

We have that capacity too. To flow back to the formative times in our
lives – our childhood, our adolescence, our first home. Like the river, we
remember; and like the river, what stands in that place now is probably
different than what was there at the time our memory was formed. What’s changed
is less the outer territory than our inner world, and if we are willing to
receive it, this can be one our greatest sources of inspiration.

The
Tapestry, not the Thread

In order to do this, we need to see our lives symbolically: less as the
single thread, and more as the giant tapestry. We need to be willing to
consider the connection between random events rather than seeing them at
surface value; and to open to the idea that even Fate follows order rather than
chaos.

This is one of the gifts of memory. When we’re in a difficult or
challenging situation, that’s often all it seems to be – difficult. What we can
seldom see from the eye of the hurricane is what else is happening: who we’re
being brought into contact with and what role they will play in the rest of our
lives; that the valuable skill we’re in the painful process of learning might
turn out to be the foundation for a whole new career path; what undreamed of
consequences our seemingly disparate decisions may guide us into.

A woman once shared with me how very grateful she was to have lost a
breast to cancer. "If I hadn’t lost that breast," she explained "I would never
have made the changes in my life that eventually led me to a healthy, happy
relationship and marriage."

As we flow back to earlier times in our lives, we can begin to put the
pieces of the puzzle together:  our lives
have unfolded as they have because we were in a specific place at a specific
time, and because of the choices we made in that moment.

Finding
Meaning in the Moment

How useful it might be to bring this gift of hindsight into the present
moment. And we can, if we are willing to see specific moments as symbolic and connected
to a larger picture. To ask, for instance, "What else might be going on here at
a deeper level?" "What might I need to learn from being in this situation?" or
even "If I accept that I may only understand fully why this has happened in
years to come, what is the most positive action I can take right now?"

Looking at our life symbolically is like looking at land from the air: we
are able to see the patterns, designs and substance of our journey. As Einstein
said, no discovery was ever made except by those who were willing to lift their
noses off the grindstone of details and take in the big picture.