I’ve spent much of the last two weekends preserving fruit for the winter. I’ve made jam & chutney, some 70 jars or so. All from foraging the local common ground and lanes.
I’ve also spent much of the last two weeks musing on the experience of therapy and how my memories & feelings are preserved. When I’m making chutney I add various ingredients to aid the preservation but they subtly change the original fruit and I’ve come to the conclusion that my memories are a bit like that. Not all of what I remember is necessarily fact or actually happened, by it’s very nature I will have added bias or forgotten parts of it. Almost certainly I will have added my own interpretation to events.
Organisations are like this too. Events take on a certain meaning, quite different to the truth (or at least the intentions). We all preserve our memories to a slightly different recipe. One which is palatable to us. I’m sure you’ve all read minutes of a meeting which you attended and thought “that’s not how I remember it”.
Which brings me back to my jam and chutney making. I used various recipes, tried several new ones & also used one from my grandmother. Each one will taste slightly different, even batches made to the same recipe will not be the same. We find our favourites and tend to stick with them but we could do so many new and interesting things with the same fruit. Well memories are the same, we can interpret, adjust, change the intensity just as we would change ingredients.
My call to action this week is simple. Look at the memories in your life, what interpretation will you preserve?
P.S. I’m probably going to top 100 jars so if you’re lucky and get in quick there may be some spares up for grabs……