Revisiting the past

The mind is a funny place. I've had a couple conversations with people where just seeing or talking to a person, listening to a song, or just being somewhere can just trigger flashes of memories so strong that it just floods your mind. When you come to, you just realize how much has changed but you're left wondering if you are the same person, and let's face it, if things happened differently, would it change what you are today.

I used to wonder this about my high school experience. Most of my friends from middle school went to the other high school, along with this guy that I liked for a few years. I was convinced that if I went to that high school, we would've been together, and we probably would have been happy. Or I would've found out how high of a pedestal I put him on, and how broken my heart could get. I may not have ended up at UCI and found some of my lifelong friends in what could arguably be the best 4 years of my life. In another scenario, I could have gone to another college and had a totally different experience and different friends, and probably a different lifestyle today.

But you know what I've learned throughout all this? Everything happens for a reason, and you end up being exactly where you need to be at exactly the right time. The thing is that most of the time it doesn't feel like that at all. Some people look back and see how different they are. Others look back and see what's stayed consistent throughout the years. One of those things that seem to stay the same, no matter how you look at it, is those feelings you had exactly at that moment when you stumble upon a trigger that floods your mind. The only difference is how you react to your feelings now vs. then. You still feel it the same, but when you look back just shows you have far you've come (or haven't).

I think one of the craziest kinds of memory mind fucks is when you go somewhere or see someone, and it triggers fragments from years, maybe even decades ago, and then you just make sense of it there. You may or may not like the realization, but it just starts to make sense. It's amazing how much your mind can hold and how long it can incubate something like that. Not to mention how insane it is how fast this happens to trigger instantly. Ridiculous. We are truly amazing creatures.