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6.06.2015

Memories and Social Media

Social media has transformed how we communicate with one another, but it has also altered how we remember.  This is problematic for those whose bad choices or youthful indiscretions are forever memorialized online for anyone to find.  However, it also has the potential to hold great value.  I can compare my life of five years ago with my life of today.  It can help keep me accountable to myself for goals I set and fail to obtain.  It can also bring comfort and joy when I look back and see when my children were small and how they progressed.

One of the other interesting things it can show us is patterns.  Earlier this year, I had noticed that May 23 has been the day that my iris first bloomed three of the last six years.  Maybe flowers do have internal clocks!  But, as interesting as I found that, today's FB trip down memory lane was far more thought provoking.

First, FB showed me something which I already knew--last year today, Patrick had his second open-heart surgery.  He did so well, and the surgeon was pleased, and our world was filled with hope.  Two years ago today, we were in the OB-GYN's office and found out we were having a boy.  Just two years--it feels like so much longer than that already.  What floored me, though, was looking at the flippant comment I had made that day:
At doc's office for the anatomy ultrasound.  Any guesses on boy/girl?  We're just hoping for 2 pulmonary arteries.  ;)
It was a joke.  And, even now, I still get the light-hearted way I meant it. But my brain, the irrational, judgy part that thinks I control the universe, stuck in its two cents.  "Did you do this?" it quietly accused me.  Did I?  Did my imprecision and failure to say two "normal" pulmonary arteries do this?  My rational brain assures me it did not.  Of course not.  My irrational brain, however, points out that I said we just wanted two pulmonary arteries--and we got that--they just weren't connected properly.  "Well," my rational brain shoots back, "If we're talking about getting what we asked for, we asked for no heart problems, and we didn't get that."  The sneaky, guilty part says slyly, "God doesn't grant every wish.  You should be more careful what you wish for."

It's a horrible "game."  One that, I imagine, we all experience at one time or another.  In talking with others who have suffered miscarriage or had children with CHD, we have all spent at least some time fixated on what we could have done differently, berating ourselves for how this must somehow be our fault.  And, as well as the doctors do to convince us otherwise, new research undercuts their assurances.  Indeed, a new study into the causes of CHD suggests that for older moms (read, "like me"), the chances of your child developing a CHD are decreased by exercising.  Crap.  So now this is my fault.  And since there seems to be a genetic component to it, I--that is to say my genetics--bear some responsibility for the outcome.

Without belaboring the point (too late), I love the ability to go back and see memories on social media.  I just have to beware of the traps that lay therein: 20/20 hindsight; and the belief that I was ever in control in the first place.  Go, and do likewise--and have fun out there :)

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