“If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge.  Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in that mechanism something will be lost….” -Charles Yu

What makes us who we are? Events? Experiences? Memories? Emotions? A combination?

The happy moments in our lives are fleeting, they pass by unnoticed, but their effect leaves a subconscious imprint, for they have a subtle (but powerful) effect on who we are. Without happiness we’re lost.  The painful moments though,  leave a more lasting visible impression (the wounds). The hurt often dictate the changes we make (or fail to make) in life. Perhaps without pain, we’re also lost.  It begs a question though: does happiness, if followed by pain, cancel the whole formula out, in essence making it zero? Pointless? No matter what “the whole formula” represents…. CONTINUE READING