Gratefully Wistful

Memories can be deceiving. With the passage of time, they may start to get bleary. Sometimes, you may start confusing them with dreams. And once that starts to happen, you may input your own information and then the memory becomes a fusion between the creation of your brain and reality, therefore becoming in many ways a fantasy.

Most of the time, at least in my case, we romanticize with the past to escape from the absurdity that the present can bring. Reality, sometimes, can prove itself too much for us to handle and we escape to simpler times.

There are devices that help us travel to those moments that we hold onto tight as a lifeline when we feel that we are drowning in the present and the future may not seem too pleasant.

One of the artifacts that help me travel back to simpler times is my guitar. Once I enter my office and see my favorite anime character painted on a piece of wood that is 4 feet by 2 feet that my cousin Bamm Bamm helped me paint, and pick up my guitar, it takes me right back to that North wall of my grandma’s house where I practiced for hours after school and became a songwriter’s apprentice.

Another channel I use for my trips back in time are my laptop, classical music, and a glass of whisky. Whisky and classical music help me get on a state of gratefulness and wistfulness that is ineffable. I can sense my brain chemistry change helping me cultivate memories that I type and convert into stories in my laptop. Past experiences become very vivid and run like a film in the corners of my mind.

We all need to hold onto simpler things of our pasts. But we cannot make it our nest. We should not only channel those times to remember how simple life was before we worried about taxes and death. But we should travel to those times to remember where we come from, how far we have made it and visualize how far we want to and can go.

We should always be grateful for how little we had, all our challenges, our failures, or choices and our conscientious mistakes because all of that made us who we are. Be also grateful for how far you have come. Be grateful for what you have without settling for it. Keep fighting for more, just the way you have been doing all this time. Because I know that the road has never been easy.

As for me, my life has always been great. I had one of the greatest childhoods of all time. Way before “smart phones,” and technology made us its slaves. I played hours of football with kids I lost contact with after middle school where I broke more than a pair of glasses, and a few rocks on the ground peeled my skin off my beef while trying to hit the torn ball. Bike falls gifted me more than a dozen scars around my knees and chins biking downhill. I broke the neighbors’ windows hitting a baseball too perfectly. I also broke my friends’ balls with the same ball. He never ever played again with us, (I apologize again Alonso.) I spent hours at night talking with friend about nothing. I skipped school with my first girlfriend, and had flirted with a random girl at the tiny Mazatlán mall. I helped my grandma since I was four in her tiny corner pub, and helped my grandpa sell newspaper in the middle of the highway. I fantasized with my cousins that we were the Z warriors and that we flew in the flying nimbus.

I wistfully long for the past not because I ran from the amazing present that I have built. But because occasionally I forget, like everyone else how wonderful my life is.

Tonight, I am gratefully wistful for my life, because everything I have lived has made me who I am, it has brought me where I am and it will take me where I visualize myself.

P.S: If you would like to see the amazing art of my cousin Bamm Bamm follow him on instagram @Bamm.pineda

He makes fusion of pop culture memes and the beautiful post-impressionism of Van Gogh.