Memory.

I sat down to write today. I knew what I wanted to write about and what I wanted to say... or so I thought.

But as I was writing, I was thinking, "Man, do I even care about this?" The words would not come, and the pictures that came to my mind were, well, boring. So I closed the computer and left it alone.

Later, after I had decided I was going to scratch this part of the story out all together -- I mean, really, who besides me (and maybe Lisa and Zack) would even notice? Nobody.

A few hours later, ready to go at it again, I turned on my computer again, unsure of where to go from there. So I did what I always do when I am not sure what comes, or should come, next: I opened my blog from then.

There, before me, was the first hand account of what I was attempting to write earlier. But this time it was full of emotion, full of excitement, full of life. And this time it was accurate. What I had remembered and tried to write earlier was so different than what had actually happened. I mean, the main ideas were the same, but the details, the order, the emotion... completely different. After reading it, refreshing my brain to the reality that WAS and what I thought it was, I became inspired to write.

This time, the words flowed, the children had faces, the people had voices. And the question that I asked earlier, "Why do I ever care about this?" suddenly had an answer. I cared because this experience had a part in shaping my experience there, and therefore had a part in shaping me.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. ~Barbara Kingsolver