I’ve been reading old copies of Reader’s Digest lately and this one article was one that had struck a chord. An excerpt from Reader’s Digest December 1970 entitled “The Importance of Childhood Memories” which was condensed from Family Weekly and authored by Norman M. Lobsenz.
“… I have asked many friends to reach into their childhoods and tell me what they recall with greatest clarity. Almost always their mention similar moments – experiences or incidents not of any great importance. Not crises or traumas or triumphs, but things which although small in themselves carry sharp sensations of warmth and joy, or sometimes of pain…. My friend is a man who experiences the world as a busy place but who basically feels all right about it and about himself. His favorite childhood memory is both clue to and cause of his fundamental soundness.”
“Clearly, the power that parents have to shape the memories their children will carry involves an awesome responsibility. In this respect, nothing is trivial. What to a grown-up might seem a casual word or action often is, to a child, the kernel of a significant memory on which he will build. A grownups, we draw on these memories as sources of strength or weakness. Author Willa Cather saw this clearly “there are those early memories,” she wrote.” One cannot get another set; one has only those.”.”
In essence, our parents had the power to build the foundations of our characters, of who we will be. But then as our own selves, we have the choice to change or continue building what has been started for us. True that our earliest childhood memories play an integral part on who we are and how we are to the people around us. But later on we build memories for ourselves and memories for the little ones. As my mother had said and I quote… “there should be improvement of the race”. We learn and we change.
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