Why We Need To Keep Precious Memories In Life
Go into your old storage containers, the backs of your closets, or even some safe containers, and you typically find boxes of old photo albums and VHS videotapes.
These are all memories that you stored and have possibly forgotten about. But that’s okay. You don’t always have space in your memory to keep all this information, and this is what makes it that much more important to keep these in your life.
There are many reasons why you’ll want to keep your precious memories and are a few of them.
1. Relive Good Memories
One of the biggest reasons you keep memories is to relive the good old times. You don’t always take the time out of your day to remember what matters most and what is most important. Keeping these memories where you can easily access them allows you to relive good memories whenever you feel the need for a pick me up or step back in time for a little while. However, it is not always easy to look back if you don’t have the memories properly stored and kept safe.
Many times, things like albums and pictures and tapes are found damaged or even lost. The best thing to do is to take all your old memories and try to modernize and organize them. The folks from Tapes to Digital recommend converting all your old VHS tapes into a digital video format that is more common such as DVD or CD. This allows you to store all your memories easier and is more convenient to access. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and your photographs and home videos will bring about the most nostalgia and those emotions in their purest forms.
2. Prevent Losing Memories and Forgetting
Aside from wanting to relive the good moments from time to time, you need to keep your memories safe so that you don’t lose them forever. The human brain is a fluid organ, meaning that the memories stored can change over time, and won’t always be reliable.
To be able to remember things that you want to keep a stronghold of, it is not always best to depend on your memories as they won’t always be the way you remember things. Instead, your home movies and photographs, if stored correctly and safely, will provide you the best memories. This will translate to being able to identify great details that you would easily forget otherwise, and in doing so, can trigger more positive, emotional, and powerful memories.
3. Build an Identity and Your Past
When someone asks you about who you are, a lot of how you identify yourself is traced back to your past. This means that you are a reflection of your parents and friends that you grew up with and how you were raised. Losing memories mean losing parts of yourself, so you must keep as many memories as possible.
Many psychiatrists struggle with getting to the root of patients’ problems because they need to trace things back to their past. But when that past is so far removed, it is such a difficult journey to rediscovery. This is not to say that you will need your memories to solve some underlying problems in your present. It is just a statement of how important your memories are to the person you are today and how you identify yourself.
4. Something to Share
Memories are important bridges to the past, and not just for yourself. Yes, memories act as a way that you can explore your personal growth and who you are and who you were, but a big factor that comes from memories is the ability to share them with others. These come in the forms of many narratives and stories. Think about a parent telling their children about their grandparents and how they grew up and how they met. These stories continue to build up the history of a family, cultural practices, and identity.
Things like heirlooms that are passed down from generation to generation will hold more emotional worth and value by understanding the stories behind them. Many people will hear their family names with pride if there is a history behind them. Your memories write the history that you will tell and teach others.
No matter the reason why you want to keep hold of your memories, they are all important and have great personal value. Make sure that you hold on to your collection handy for when you’re feeling a bit nostalgic, have some experiences to share, or just need a little reminder of the important things in life.
