Friday night and yesterday it snowed at my house in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is an extremely rare occasion, and we actually got the most snow we have had in quite a while. Despite this occurrence, I really had no desire to go outside. I don't really like cold, so I stayed inside most of the day yesterday watching crappy sitcoms and eating random food in my pantry. I was dying of boredom for a while until my friend finally got permission to come over. We went night sledding at around 9:00pm. We sledded for a little while, but mostly we just laid in the snow. This really brought out the younger Makena. I felt as if I was 9 again, simply focusing on the here and now. Even though my life has been quite hectic lately, I was brought back to the stage at which I hadn't a care in the world. All I was focusing on was the snow surrounding me. I could effortlessly absorb the moment I was experiencing. Usually, when I feel I am encountering something I will want to remember I try my best to take in all I see and feel. This task has become harder as I grow older, but something about last night brought me back to when it was easy to make simple memories.
I often think about how my brain picks what I remember, because a lot of the time I would rather forget the memories engraved in my mind. I think with maturity we disconnect with our simple minds in a way. We think so much about what is going on that we just physically cannot focus on the present. Maybe, in order to make a clear memory, we have to look back on the child-like mindset. But this just becomes more difficult as we age.
I took a long walk by myself today, and I saw the beautiful blue sky and snow around me, but it did not sink in. I could not simply enjoy my surroundings because I was too concerned with what is occurring in my life right now. I brought a camera, in an attempt to capture these beautiful scenes, but I wasn't feeling the moment. Camera's are just a sad substitute for memories. We can try our hardest to save moments, but we can only save them in our minds, and the level of detail at which they are saved depends on how much we focus in the moment.
Anyways, I'm going to try and post some of the pictures I took today, I was also trying to take a new profile picture for facebook :)
