Sometimes I peer into the depths of my past in an attempt to understand the hidden intricate tapestry behind it all.

I ponder and see flashes of years gone by, days of struggle, moments of delight and it all seems so real and unreal at the same, almost as if I was reflecting on a dream I had.

It’s there but not there and yet I know all these memories are indeed real refractions of an experience but their lucidity and transcience beguile.

Dramas, fears, anxieties, hopes, joys, and breakthroughs all coalesce into some pattern that’s known as ‘my life’ — a jukebox of memories that is so transient that it very rarely gets exposed and explored for fear of not being ‘present’ or ‘focused’ on what’s at hand.

But it’s quite nourishing to open the jukebox sometimes and see what lurks within. Because when you do, you’re exposed to things that you can’t experience in ordinary day-to-day extroversion and ‘work’.

You start to see how your unconscious patterns repeat themselves, how certain themes come up again and again, almost as if there’s a unique signature attached to your soul that reverberates into your experience of life whether you like it or not.

It’s through deeply diving into the jukebox attached to our soul’s signature that we get some form of soul sustenance. Daydreaming and revisiting the past in some weird lullaby of a day spent with less structure offers many delightful rewards to those who are willing.

It’s almost as if the Western obsession with working hard acts as a guilt firewall that blocks individuals from deeply exploring their inner jukebox so that they can stop repeating the same old patterns/songs.

Doing more of x, y, and z via ‘hard work’ is the main way by which I can make ‘progress’.

But having a day where I just stop and allow myself to sink into my jukebox of memories, particularly after spending countless days mired in intense work — actually taking the opposite route and diving deep into the opposing modality of life — has much to offer.

Slower-paced days are where maturity begins to unfold and a wiser pattern of existing can be ushered in. I guess it’s days when new chapters begin and old ones end.

Under the pretence of needing to do x,y,z and work all the time, what we’re doing sometimes is running away from doing the other kind of work (whether we can call it work) that needs doing — which is exploring our psyche, our past, and our soul’s signature so that we naturally become re-alligned.

Samy Felice

The Jukebox of Memories