Box Analogy - Recognizing and Choosing the Memories We Draw Upon
- Accrescent Institute
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
In Engaging Fathers, Thomas C. Rector shares this analogy for recognizing the memories we draw from and the opportunity we have to choose which memories we want to carry forward in our interactions with others - and especially with our children.
Transcript:
"Let me put this analogy into your mind: That box holds all of our memories.
And they're ours. They're ours personally. And we draw upon whatever those memories are when we are responding to the world around us.
And what we need to get conscious about, is when we open the flaps and examine the individual memories, there are some of those memories in there that are just as precious as can be, and we would like to duplicate those.
We would like to expand those.
We'd like to have the richness of those.
And for all of us, there are also images in there that are not necessarily fun, or pleasant, or productive.
What we have as people and choices, if we choose to be conscious about it, we have the opportunity to take and identify those things in the box – those memories that are in the box – that we don't want to carry forward.
They're part of us, but we don't want to carry forward.
We don't want to carry forward as far as raising our children.
And so we can identify those particular ones, and say, "This is how I would like to do it different going forward."
If you are a parent or soon-to-be parents, you may also be interested in: Raising A Child to Thrive
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