Monuments

We all set up monuments either physically or in our memories.

We live opposite a graveyard and it is visited regularly. There are some people who are there nearly every day, visiting the graves of loved ones. The headstones have the names and dates of those buried there, but the memories of the visitors hold so much more.

The monuments we set up in our head can be good - remembering people who have loved us, mentored us, helped us along the journey; and those times of victory in hard circumstances, when we have stood firm, when we have stood up in the face of injustice. These are helpful monuments.

But we can also set up monuments over perceived slights and insults. We sometimes allow bitterness to take a hold, building a large monument to our hurt. These monuments are not at all helpful. If we keep revisiting these feelings they become embedded and built in stone, not easily removed.

What monuments are you setting up in your memory? Are you remembering things which are best forgotten? Holding on to hurtful words and setting up a monument of bitterness? Or are you remembering the good things, the things which build you up rather than the monument?