According to the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, human life is solitary and people are by nature both competitive and vulnerable. Jean Jacques Rousseau held a different point of view, regarding human nature as something malleable. He believed that with the correct training, man could develop the potential given to him by nature and maintain his freedom. Socrates on the other hand, was one of the first to believe in the inherent goodness of man. Naturally, each one of those philosophers had his own set of arguments.
All those who pass through our lives leave good or bad memories. Each person is like a motion picture, which our memory edits so that we only retain the good elements. We store them in an unobstructed space, available to us in times of need.
We should not describe our friendship with someone based on one final exchange that might have ended in disagreement, nor should we rush to find a new friend. Our memories last a long time and so maintain harmony and humanity within us. We can quite easily dust off the old motion pictures and bring them back into our lives with a smile. That’s where we keep the best moments and the best memories. It is the only tool we have to calculate how well someone has treated us. If someone was good to you for half an hour, the result is half an hour of non-stop beautiful memories. Beyond that, you are not obliged to change your opinion or your mood. You can ignore the unpleasant past and simply retain the good times with that person.
Each one of us has something they call “The Good Times” which have nothing to do with our living conditions at the time but with the beauty of the souls we came across.
A friend once asked me why I consider the days of the siege to be one of “The Good Times”. “What makes those days beautiful”, I replied, “is that I met you and my other best friends.”
Our souls contain an internal world that allows them to feel safe and comfortable, regardless of what is going on outside. The value of someone’s life is the sum total of good times they have experienced in this motion picture, with the bad memories edited out and the good moments retained.
A beautiful moment with a friend is worth a lifetime of mistakes. Without an enduring memory, you lose much beauty from your personal life. It’s true that some mistakes are tragic, but one’s life is made up of a chain of beautiful mistakes, which the passage of time converts into something funny that you remember and laugh about.
I remember my friends. I miss those innocent people. Nowadays I rely on my enduring memories to assemble the best frames, so that I can direct the film of my life in the nicest possible way.
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