In Love with Peace & Obsessed with War

Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present?

Memory is my ability to store, retain, and retrieve information gained throughout life. Personal experiences, academic information, people, etc., all rest in my memory.

All organisms have a memory of sorts. It is part of the arsenal of weapons everyone and everything uses to survive. Imagine if we could not remember our names: what kind of mess would that make?

Humans: memory is emotional.
Sad memories. Happy memories. Funny memories.
The memories evoke an emotion, a certain mind set, a pattern of thinking. Those emotions, mind sets, and patterns of thinking are the things that have the potential to either hinder or help me in my efforts to learn from the past and succeed in the present.

The memory itself, standing alone in some unidentified ethereal location, is colorless, odorless, silent, and nonliving. A memory resurfacing in the my mind is colored in, develops olfactorily, is given a loud voice, and becomes grandly animate all because of that which remembering makes me feel.

Feelings: hinder & improve
What the memories make me feel is the thing really to be considered in learning from my past and succeeding in my present. Persistent sadness or pity usually cause my stagnation, because sadness and pity that perform in a timely fashion are normal and healthy. Their persistence cripples me and tricks me into believing that I deserve the sadness and pity for the rest of my life. I don't.

Good memories. They serve to remind me that life is not always bad, that thus far, I have always made it through, that life goes on. The good memories treat the symptoms of this terminal illness that is life.